


Cast a Shadow

by Taliax



Series: Cast a Shadow [1]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Adventure, Dark Aqua, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Ignores KH2.8, Post-Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep, Realm of Darkness, Spoilers - Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-03-02 05:36:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 91,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2801513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taliax/pseuds/Taliax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just because he was a heart of pure darkness didn't mean he wanted to be stuck in the Realm of Darkness forever. Just because she was the only other one there didn't make them friends. And just because they were going to spending a whole, whole lot of quality time together didn't mean she could change him.  Ignores BbS 0.2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Paradise or Prison

XXXXXX

 

XXX

 

There was nothing.  For a few horrifying, breathless moments, there was nothing.  No X-Blade – _shattered –_ no fighting – _so still –_ no Ventus – _only half again –_ no Aqua – _dead…?_

_I…_

And then there was less nothing.  The feeling of tight, stifling clothing stretching across his skin.  _That stupid suit.  Can’t even get rid of it by dying…_ But if he could feel that, he couldn’t be dead, could he?  At least, not yet.

_I… don’t…_

Sinking. His stomach dropped; the darkness pressed in on his eyes and made it impossible to tell how far he was falling, but a cold breeze whipped upwards into his face, through his hair – _hey, I have hair –_ so he must’ve been falling fast.

He didn’t particularly care where he was falling.  _I should care, right?  Why don’t I care?_

 _Ven’s heart attached to the light,_ he remembered.  _Maybe I’m just becoming one with the darkness._

His sightless eyes widened as he realized he _did_ care.  Darkness was under his control, not vice versa.  It wouldn’t get his heart.

The vertical wind sped up – he was falling faster, faster, and did he just see something?  Blue.  Glowing spots of blue, scattered across the ground above him, fluorescent holes of light.  And yellow microscopic specks, too, like stars.  _What?_

Before he could determine the source of any of the lights, he crashed to the earth like a rogue meteor.

XXX

He wasn’t sure how long it took him to wake up.  Time felt asleep itself.  However long he was unconscious, though, it wasn’t long enough to relieve the pain of a headfirst impact with enough force to carve a crater in the rocky ground.

The base of his helmet, the metal part cupping his chin and jaw, was still present on his head, but for some reason the glass that would’ve actually protected him wasn’t.  With a mental command, it spread over his hair and face, tinting his vision even darker than this dark place already was.  If only he’d done that _before_ sustaining a concussion…

 _Why should I get up?_ He wondered.  It wasn’t long before a convincing enough reason came to him: he was bored.  Sleeping was boring.  If he was just going to sleep and wallow in pain in this hole, he might as well be dead.

So he got up, climbed out of the crater, rubbed his throbbing but somehow not-crushed head – well, helmet – and looked around.

Those yellow specks were a lot bigger up close.  _Really_ close, almost-touching-his-face close.  And even to a heart of pure darkness, the horde of them packed around him was incredibly creepy.

Heartless eyes.  He – _Ventus_ – no, the two of them when they were whole – had seen them before, but that was so long ago.  Master Xehanort had made the Heartless attack him, and the panic and fear had split their weak heart.  He backed away, but another Heartless, a Neoshadow just like that fateful day, blocked his path.

“Back off,” he snarled, summoning Void Gear and taking up a battle stance, but the Heartless barely reacted.  Its antennae twitched curiously, as if asking what he was doing.  But none attacked, not even one.

“What are you staring at?”  He snapped.  The Heartless made unintelligible noises, sounding like the tide washing over a rocky beach, and then they slowly dispersed, losing interest in him.

 _Why aren’t they trying to kill me?_ They were darkness, so – wait, without Ventus, he was only darkness, too.  To them, he might as well be another Heartless.

Well, that would be a huge advantage if he was stuck in the source of all Heartless, which was the only place this could possibly be: the Realm of Darkness.

He suddenly let out a maniacal cackle.  “The Realm of Darkness!”  Fate was stupid if it thought this was a punishment.  He was _born_ for a place like this.  No more light slicing at his heart like in all those bright worlds.

“Hah, who needs a X-Blade when I’ve got this whole Realm?”  This was what the X-Blade War would’ve done anyway, right? Plunged the whole World into darkness?  Now he had that all to himself – he didn’t even have to share with that idiot Xehanort.

He grinned demonically.  “This is going to be _perfect.”_

XXX

…Or maybe not.  Sure, he could do whatever he wanted here, but he couldn’t get any dark corridors to open to the Realm of Light, the Heartless were idiots not even worthy of a sparring match, and the landscape was dull for as far as he’d explored.

“This sucks,” he decided.  It was so _boring._ He’d resorted to summoning a few Unversed for company, but they ticked him off so he killed them, and then his heart writhed in pain.  So he preferred not to do that.

It wasn’t like the Heartless were entertaining, either.  With no hearts to steal, they’d occasionally pick fights with each other, and the winner would “eat” (more like absorb, really) the loser and gain its stolen hearts.  None of them dared to attack him, though, since he was the darkest of the dark.  Even if he attacked them first, their retaliation only lasted for a few minutes before they fled to save their worthless half-existences.

So the most interesting option was exploring.  He never slept in the same place twice; his legs carried him for several “days” until he took refuge in caves or craters or just slept under the purple-black sky.  He wasn’t sure how much longer he would’ve lasted without going insane if it weren’t for the sudden Heartless migration one dawnless morning.

He yawned and stretched up, popping his spine.  Sleeping on solid rock would be the death of him someday.  Not that he’d ever had a comfortable bed, or anything remotely comfortable for that matter.

Hopping down from the stone platform that had functioned as a makeshift bed, he landed on a Neoshadow’s foot.  It shoved him aside in its haste to get to… wherever it was going.  He shot off a Fire spell at it, only to have a Darkball crash into his face, knock him to the ground, and fly after the burning Neoshadow.

Neoshadow _s_ , actually.  And Shadows, and Defenders, and every other Heartless he knew along with a ton he didn’t.  They swarmed over him without care until he roared up, keyblade slicing through semi-tangible bodies that came too close.  The stampede got the hint and formed a bubble around him, like he was a rock jutting from the center of a dark stream.

“What is going _on?”_ He asked, not that anybody would answer.

And then he smelled it: a rich, pure, clean scent, like freshly-washed cotton dipped in nectar hanging from a cherry blossom tree.  He didn’t know how he recognized those scents, considering he’d never smelled any of them before.  At least, not in his memory.  But he could feel the tugging in the pit of his heart that could only mean one thing – light.

_A light in the heart of the Realm of Darkness?_

He couldn’t have resisted it if he tried; the Heartless were sweeping him along, and the scent was strong, and his primal instincts drove him like a moth to flame, like any common Heartless.  Plus, it was the most interesting thing that had happened in his time here.  Probably the most interesting thing that ever had or ever would happen again, too.

 _How long has it been since I felt…? It was when_ Ventus… _No, I don’t miss that… So why am I…?  Whatever, not like there’s anything else to do…_

Using catlike agility and tracking skills only gifted to a heart of pure darkness, he wove his way through the Heartless pack.  Deformed pillars and jagged rocks served as springboards that allowed him to practically fly over their heads.

The scent must’ve been even stronger than he thought, because after what he guessed was hours he still hadn’t reached it.  He’d left the majority of the Heartless in his dust, but he was so exhausted that he had to sleep, and by the time he woke again they had caught up again.

Two more “days” passed.  The scent grew overpowering; his eyes watered, dizziness slowed his progress, but he kept tracking it.  The Heartless, when he saw them, grew even more agitated.  What could the light be?  What was it doing here?

Curiosity won out against discomfort, so he kept going.

He was close now; he could feel it.  The massive cluster of Heartless was a big clue, too.  So were the faint but determined battle cries… _familiar_ battle cries…

He stood at the edge of a steep cliff that protruded into the inky sky.  The tip of it was so narrow that he tested his weight on it first to make sure it wouldn’t crumble into the chasm below, but it stayed firm, so he stepped forward and looked unflinchingly towards the ground.

The cliff wasn’t so tall, at least not as tall as he thought, and that wasn’t a cavern – the mass of dark creatures, more than he had ever seen in one place, even in the Realm of Darkness, created the illusion of depth.

The pure scent of light wafted from the center of the dark mass, blown upward by a fresh breeze.  He took a deep breath, then immediately coughed it out.  It scoured the inside of his throat like acid, but he still had to get closer.

He’d stared firing a barrage of Dark Blizzaga on the Heartless below before he realized what he was doing.  It wasn’t very effective; while it was a momentary distraction, the Heartless’ lust drove them to fight to devour the light without any sense of self-preservation.  He tried mentally commanding them, the way he did with his Unversed, but their dark clouds of “emotion” blocked him out.  By now he was pretty fed up with the Heartless in general.  What right did they have to the light?  _He_ was the strongest darkness; _he_ deserved to eliminate the foreign light.

Without a second thought for the force of gravity, he jumped from the cliff.  The fall lasted a fraction of a second; the impact caused him no pain.  The vicious reaction of the Heartless mob, however, did.  Wyverns dive-bombed him; Darkballs snapped at his arms; Neoshadows tried to drag him into their dark pools.  With a roar he summoned his keyblade and slashed through them with a deadly combo.  A Wyvern counterattacked by scooping him up in its talons, flying up, and dangling him over the horde at a much greater height than the cliff.

“Let _go_ of me you overgrown- uh, actually don’t let go.  Or I’ll bash your skull in.”

Apparently he still had some power over the Heartless, because it didn’t drop him.  Instead it gave a shrill _skreee_ and shifted him to its other foot.

From this angle, he managed a glimpse at the source of the light – only a glimpse, but it was enough.

 _I_ knew _I recognized that voice – wait, what is_ she _doing here?!_

He barely had time to wonder before the Wyvern plunged into a steep spiral dive, straight towards the girl he recognized.

“Hold on stop you idiot _stop!”_ He yelled at the Wyvern in vain.  They were a split second away from her – and the very solid ground –

Her keyblade dissolved the Wyvern just before it headbutted her, but that didn’t stop his momentum.  He managed to tuck his head and roll across the craggy ground without breaking any bones.  That didn’t mean he wouldn’t feel bruised and broken later, but right now adrenaline was pumping through his veins so frantically that he barely stopped to catch his breath.

“Hey, losers,” he called over the roars, grunts, and hisses of the Heartless.  He didn’t spare himself a glance at the shocked, apparently speechless girl beside him, though her horribly pure smell was overpowering him in a way it never did in the Realm of Light.  Couldn’t get distracted now; the Heartless would jump on any scent of weakness.

He summoned a ball of Dark Firaga and held it high as a warning. _This better work, or—_ Well, he didn’t have time to think about it.

“She’s _mine,”_ he declared to the Heartless.  They quieted slightly at his voice.  “You hear me?  _Mine._ So if you want your worthless nonexistences ripped to shreds, just _try_ to take her from me.”

Sure, they’d paused for a moment, but now the Heartless didn’t seem impressed by his threat.  Several Neoshadows slashed at the girl in unison, but she could only block so many claws.  The last slash landed her flat on the ground with a broken cry.

“I _said,_ she’s _mine!”_ He snarled, destroying the Neoshadow and other nearby Heartless with his Dark Firaga.  The girl writhed from its toxic heat.  “But if that’s how you want to play…”

He finally allowed himself a clear look at the girl.  Blue hair was the most striking attribute at first; he knew her blue eyes would be too, if they weren’t closed.  Dark scars, bruises, and blisters marred her exposed skin – which she had an overly large amount of, especially compared with himself.  Her right sleeve was in tatters, one of her pink chest-straps hung loosely where it had snapped, and that odd skirt-like thing she usually wore tied around her waist was missing.

In summary, she was broken.  He could finish her off then and there.  Finally have vengeance on the girl who had killed him.

But even as he pressed his keyblade to her throat, a voice in his head whispered, _Then what?_

The girl coughed up blood.  Her eyes opened narrowly, but where he expected to see bright blue, full of loathing for the abomination she had killed, there was only cold, dead grey.

“Kill me,” she muttered.  Her voice was like gravel.  “At least…” she coughed, “then this nightmare will end…”

The Heartless wouldn’t wait forever for him to make a decision.  So he made one.

He summoned an orb of pure darkness and shoved it down her throat.

XXX

“You’re heavier than you look,” he said as soon as she regained consciousness.  She hadn’t opened her eyes yet, but he could tell from the shift in her breathing.

When she coughed, dark violet smoke, the same color as the fire he was stoking, drifted out.  “What did you _do_ to me, you-” He didn’t find out how she planned to insult him this time, because another coughing fit wracked her body, and she curled back into the fetal position.

“You mean besides saving your life?”  He smirked under his mask.  “I used a spell to cover up your light, single-handedly fought off the remaining Heartless, and carried you all the way here.”

He didn’t mention that there were less than fifty Heartless remaining once they thought her heart was gone, and the cave he’d carried her to was only a few yards away.  But still, the fact that he’d _saved her life_ should’ve made her a little less critical.

She didn’t seem to hear.  He was starting to wonder if she’d fallen sleep again until she gasped out, “Why?”

He shrugged.  “I was bored.”

It was probably – no, definitely – the most honest thing he’d ever said to her, but she opened her eyes just enough to scowl at him.  “Why… should I believe you… _Vanitas_?”  She practically hissed his name.  It was almost as amusing as it was irritating.

“I don’t give two Shadows if you believe me or not.  But if I didn’t want you alive, you’d already be dead.”

She coughed up more dark purple smoke.  “What do you… want from me?”

The violet fire reflected eerily off of Vanitas’s mask.  “I’m sure I’ll come up with something.”

Unfortunately, she fell asleep before she could grace him with a heated retort.  It was too bad; that half-conversation was the most entertaining thing that had happened since he’d gotten stuck here.

He lay down and tucked his hands behind his helmeted head.

“Goodnight, Aqua.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cover art was drawn by me C:


	2. Need to Change

Vanitas woke to the sound of Aqua heaving up the rest of the light-concealing smoke.

“How long is this-” she coughed up another opaque lungful, “going to last?”

“Not long enough,” Vanitas replied.  He could already smell her light resurfacing, which meant every Heartless within a hundred miles could too.  In fact, a few smaller, stupider ones were creeping through the entrance of the cave already.  Vanitas shot off a few volleys of Blizzaga until the entrance was frozen shut.

Even though Aqua still looked like she was at the brink of death – which she practically was – she found enough strength to summon her keyblade and point it at him.  Well, not _her_ keyblade – didn’t that blade belong to Eraqus?

“If you dare shove that black magic down my throat again, I swear I’ll kill you.”

Vanitas raised an eyebrow.  If he didn’t know any better, he’d think he’d rubbed off on her.  The Realm of Darkness must’ve been even harder on her mind than he’d thought, or else his light-concealing magic had been too effective.  He didn’t think it was strong enough to _destroy_ any of her light.

“That’s not my only trick,” he said, standing up.  She flinched, backing up farther into the cave like a cornered animal.  “Stop it, it’s for your own good.”

“Yeah, right,” she said sarcastically.  Her guard didn’t falter.

Vanitas rolled his eyes and tossed her a hi-potion, which her reflexes were just sharp enough for her to catch.  “Look, if you’re spewing light everywhere you’ll just get both of us killed.  Drink that and man up; this won’t hurt.  Much.”

He smirked.  Just because he wanted her alive didn’t mean he couldn’t have some fun.

Aqua glared with all her strength, but eventually she caved and drank the hi-potion (why she hadn’t used Cure earlier was a mystery to him).  While she was momentarily distracted, Vanitas cast a cloud of black fog over her, but unlike the darkness from before, this fog seemed to dissipate as soon as it touched her chalky skin.  She gasped and dropped the empty potion bottle.

“Tch.  You’re fine.”  Vanitas kicked the bottle aside.  “That was just a weaker cloaking spell.  Hopefully it’ll be good enough.”

“Why do you care?”  Aqua asked, scratching her arms, which were breaking out in goosebumps.

“I told you already, I’m bored.  If you actually _paid attention,_ you’d realize I’m just as stuck here as you are.”

“But you’re darkness.  You belong here.”

He shook his head.  “I don’t belong here.  I don’t belong-” _anywhere._ It had been so long – his whole life, practically – since he talked to anyone, it almost came out.  “-shut up,” he muttered.  “How did _you_ get here, anyway?”

Her gaze traveled upwards, but the cave’s low ceiling blocked the sky she must have hoped to see.  Not that outside was anything but darkness.

“I saved Terra,” she said with a light smile.  It was amazing how at the mention of her friend’s name all her anger, pain, and fatigue faded away, and for the first time since he had found her in the Realm of Darkness, the light returned to her eyes.  It was enough to make Vanitas want to find Terra, wherever he was, and strangle him.  “He was falling into the darkness, but I sent him back to the light.”

“Wait a sec,” Vanitas paced around Aqua, “you had a chance to let that loser rot in the Realm of Darkness, and instead you chose to get _yourself_ stuck down here trying to save him?”

“He would have done the same for me,” Aqua said firmly, somehow managing to glare straight into his eyes even through his mask.  “He was a true friend.”

“You and Ventus, always going on about your friends,” Vanitas muttered.  _“At least I have some!” –_ that’s what Ventus had said before their final battle.  What was he saying, Vanitas needed friends?  _Please._ Look where that got the three of them – Ventus’s heart shattered, Aqua stranded in the Realm of Darkness, and Terra… well, apparently Terra got the good end of the friendship deal, if Aqua saved him.  “Wonder what happened to the old man, if Terra’s not up to his ears in darkness…”

“What?”  Aqua asked.

“Xehanort.  The creep planned on possessing your friend’s body, but I was too busy fighting you and Ventus to find out if that worked out or not.”

Aqua’s brow furrowed.  “It did but… wait, ‘creep’? Who are you to talk?”

Vanitas rolled his eyes.  “I never possessed Ventus, if that’s what you’re getting at.  We were originally two halves of a whole; my personality just happens to be stronger.  Always was.”  He chuckled darkly.  “If you had met your precious _Ventus_ before Xehanort split us in two, you would’ve jumped down here before even thinking about being his friend.”

“You’re wrong!”  Aqua yelled, summoning her keyblade and standing unsteadily.  Vanitas might’ve thought twice about playing mind games with her if he knew just how quickly she would regain her strength.  Probably shouldn’t have given her that hi-potion.  “I didn’t give up on Terra even though there was darkness in him, and I’d never give up on Ven!”

“Then what about me, Aqua?” He crossed his arms.  “Do I have too much darkness to be saved?”

He wasn’t sure where it came from.  For a moment he wasn’t sure of what he’d said at all; he just stared through the protective layer of his mask and tried to make out the emotions beneath Aqua’s troubled expression.

“…Forget it,” he finally said, turning towards the cave’s frozen entrance, where the Heartless had stopped ramming themselves against the ice, now that Aqua’s light was hidden. 

He didn’t need ‘saving.’ He was darkness, and that was it.  He had no business being so close to someone so full of light; it was messing with his head.  Why did he think he could keep her?  They’d just end up killing each other – again – and it wasn’t like he needed her, surely _something_ else would happen to keep him from dying of boredom…

“No,” Aqua said quietly, breaking his thoughts.

“No _what?”_ He spat without looking at her.

“You’re not too far gone.  No one can stray so far from the light that there’s no way to go back.”

Vanitas snorted.  “You’re assuming something you shouldn’t.”

“And what would that be?”  She asked it like a challenge.

“That I’ve ever seen the light in the first place.”

Vanitas thought he had stumped her, but eventually she replied, “That doesn’t mean you can’t find it for the first time.  It would not be easy, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”

…This whole conversation was stupid.  He was stupid for bringing it up in the first place.  He didn’t _want_ light.  All light did, especially in a place like this, was get you killed.

“And now you’re assuming that I’d even want to.”

“…Well, you did save my life.”

She was going to try and use that insignificant little fact as proof he had goodness in him?  As Braig would’ve said, as if.

“Yeah, and I tried to kill you plenty of times before that.  So what?”  He leaned against the wall, eyeing her out of the corner of his helmet.  At some point in their conversation she had sat down and began to wash her face with some water she had filled the empty hi-potion bottle with.

She shrugged.  “Maybe I’d just like to believe that the only other person trapped here with me isn’t completely evil.”

“Maybe you’re too optimistic for your own good,” Vanitas muttered.

“Probably,” she admitted.  Maybe she hadn’t gone completely insane, then.

“Come on.  Time to go.”

“Go where?”  She asked, combing her hair with her fingers.  “I’ve been walking forever, and there’s nothing out there.”

“I don’t…” Wait.  He _did_ know.  “This place doesn’t go on forever.  I can sense which parts of the Realm of Darkness are lighter – the edges.  Maybe we could find a way out of here.”

“Really?”  Her eyes lit up again.  Little did she know this was only a half-truth – he could sense concentrations of darkness, but he had no sure way of knowing if by following the lighter areas they could make it out of here.  But even if they couldn’t, it was a way of making sure Aqua stayed with him even after she came to her senses and realized he would always be a heart of pure darkness.

“Sure.  I don’t have a reason to stay down here.”  He shrugged.

“Wait,” she said dubiously.  “When we get out of here, what’s stopping you from trying to start the Keyblade War again?”

Vanitas rolled his eyes, not that she could see.  He counted the reasons on his fingers.  “One, the X-Blade’s destroyed; two, Xehanort’s apparently gone, thank Kingdom Hearts; and three, I’m not a complete idiot.”  Like he was going to go back and do the same thing he’d _died_ trying to do once already?  No way.

“If you’re so glad to be rid of Xehanort, why did you help him in the first place?”

Vanitas shrugged.  “What else was I going to?  Now come on, I’m bored and you want to get out of here.”

Aqua didn’t argue even though he was rude about it.  She pocketed the empty potion bottle, not one to litter even in a place where no one was around to care.  When he left the cave, she stayed a good two yards behind him, so there was no misconception that she actually trusted him.  She said he _could_ change.  Not that he would.

No, he was perfectly suited for survival here in the Realm of Darkness.  If anyone needed to change, it was Aqua. 


	3. In Every Heart

Vanitas quickly found that Aqua was disappointing when she wasn’t fighting or arguing or rambling about her stupid friends.  Her expression stayed closed and brooding whenever he checked over his shoulder to make sure she was still there, and she hadn’t spoken a word since they started walking.  Of course, neither had he.  Was she as bored as he was? 

At least the Heartless they ran across broke up the monotony.  Not because the dark creatures were particularly interesting, but because he got to watch Aqua’s twirly, girly fighting style without worrying about blocking her attacks.

“Something funny?”  She asked – finally, something to break the silence – when she caught him snorting after she came out of her Spellweaver command style. 

“Huh-? The Heartless are just pathetic, that’s all,” he covered quickly, crushing an HP orb in his hand.  Her twirliness may be amusing, but he knew from experience how deadly it could be.

“These aren’t as bad as the ones I had to face earlier.”  She wandered across the width of the gorge they were travelling through, absorbing the rest of the HP orbs.  She needed them more than he did.

“’Cause you’re not spewing light everywhere anymore.  You’re not attracting the worst ones.”

Aqua glared at him, but her gaze wavered.  “This place isn’t right.”  She shook her head.  “Any place where darkness is more of a protection than light is wrong.”  Her voice had lost a little of its gravely-ness from the potion earlier, but even the air in this place seemed to make her sick, probably stinging her throat the same way the scent of her light burned his.

Vanitas rolled his eyes.  “Again with the whole ‘Light is Perfect’ thing.  I don’t know how you can still believe in that after all this.”

“All what?”  Aqua raised an eyebrow, and Vanitas snorted.

“ _Everything._ Do you need a list?”  She didn’t reply, so apparently she did.  “You getting stuck here in the first place, Ventus ending up in a coma…” His eyes were drawn to her keyblade, which she still gripped protectively.  “Your Master was the most Light-happy of them all, wasn’t he?  And you know what happened to him.”

She squeezed the handle of Eraqus’s keyblade tighter, staring at it intently, and then replied, “That was Xehanort’s doing.  All of this was, in one way or another.  What happened to us, what happened to you, all of it.  None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for darkness.”

Vanitas shook his head.  “Don’t think everything about darkness is stupid just because the old geezer was.  I wouldn’t be able to find our way out of here if it wasn’t for the power of darkness.”

“That’s not the point,” Aqua said, continuing down the path that narrowed the farther they walked.  “If it wasn’t for the darkness, we wouldn’t _need_ to find a way out.”

Vanitas shrugged.  “Call me biased, but if it weren’t for darkness, I wouldn’t exist.”

“Is that supposed to make me accept it?” She asked with raised eyebrows.

“Ouch, Aqua.  I thought people with light in their hearts would be a little nicer than that,” he replied, exaggerating his offense.  _Nice to be reminded where I stand… Whatever._ “Of course, even your heart isn’t completely full of light,” he retorted sharply.

“It’s better than yours,” she snapped.

“Better than me, Aqua? I thought light didn’t boast,” Vanitas taunted, enjoying the frustration on her face.  Finally, a decent reaction.  “What would your Master say?”

“You know _nothing_ of my Master,” she growled, baring his keyblade in a battle stance.  Was she actually planning on fighting him now, in his home court, when she was still weak and dependent on him?

“I know he hated anything with a fraction of darkness.  So seeing you here, surrounded by it, talking with it…” Vanitas laughed.  “He’d have a heart attack.  If he was still alive, that is.  But he’s not.  And that’s Terra’s fault as much as Xehanort’s; you know that, right?”

“Shut up!”  Tendrils of magic swirled around Aqua’s keyblade and up her arm.  “You have no right to insult my friends!  Terra fought his darkness!”

Vanitas’s eyes widened in genuine surprise, not that she could see.  “And are you fighting yours, Aqua?”

She gasped in a mixture of shock and confusion, then looked at the weapon in her hands.  Her confusion slowly faded to disbelief at the dark magic swirling around her late Master’s once light-filled keyblade.

“What…?”  She tried to shake it off, but it only spread farther up her arm.  “No!  I don’t know what kind of trick this is—”

“Because it’s not a trick, Aqua.  It’s _you.”_ He was almost as shocked as she was.  He knew she had natural talent at magic, but did that include dark magic that she’d (assumedly) never used before?

“No… _NO_!”  She cast Aeroga over herself to blow away the dark magic, which finally vanished.  “I can’t… I _won’t_ …”

“Sheesh, Aqua, just give up already,” Vanitas said, leaning against a faintly glowing rock outcropping to the side of the path.  “Darkness is in everyone, even in the Realm of Light.  What makes you think you can escape it here?”

Her shoulders slumped as she hugged herself tightly, shivering.  “I don’t know.”  Her voice came out as a hoarse growl.  “I don’t know… But I have to get out of here.  I have to get out…”

Vanitas didn’t think she had the energy to run, but apparently she did.  She fled into a maze of organic-looking rock pillars before he remembered that he should probably chase her down, unless he wanted to be alone and bored again.

Still, something was wrong.  He’d brought out the worst in her, just as he’d intended.  He’d won his little game, proved that even the great Master Aqua could be broken.

“So why isn’t this any fun…?

XXX

It was even more of a maze on the inside than he’d thought.  Some of the pillars were more like ridges, winding odd patters and dead-ending in several places.

“She couldn’t have gotten that far…”

Maybe not, but there were too many directions to check, and his cloaking spell had done its job too well.  Either that, or she had lost more light… “Why should I care if she loses all her light?  It happened to me, and I turned out fine,” he told himself, picking another path at random.  Spiked pillars jutted from the ground in the middle of this one, forcing him to carefully weave his way down the path.

“She couldn’t have come this way,” he decided.  “She’s not thinking straight enough to-”

Sobbing.  Faint, but definitely coming from the end of this path.  Vanitas slashed through the remaining narrower spikes between him and Aqua, who was curled up in a ball under a ledge that protruded from a dead-end wall.

Now that he found her, he had no idea what to do.  He’d never heard anyone cry before, unless he counted himself, and that had been a long, long time ago.  But this was _Aqua._

“Shut up,” he ordered, arms crossed over his chest.  She was too good for crying.  She ignored him.  “I said _shut up!”_

She finally looked up.  Her other sleeve was missing, probably caught on one of the spikes he chopped down.  Fresh cuts marred her bare arms.  _Pathetic._

“Are you a Keyblade Master or not?”  Vanitas spat.  “I thought you were better than this.”

“I’m not,” she mumbled, tears streaming down her face.  “I have darkness inside me…”

“So what?”  He crouched in front of her.  “I already told you, every creature on the face of the worlds has darkness in it.  Even your beloved Master did.  You’re no special snowflake.”

She shook her head.  “What sick game are you playing now?  This is what you wanted, isn’t it?  To watch me end up just like you?”

“As if you’re anything like me.”  He almost laughed.  Instead he sat down next to her with his back to the charcoal grey ledge.  “You don’t even have a fraction of the darkness Ventus _started_ with, before I was taken out.”

“But-”

“Look, you’re in the Realm of Darkness.  No being of light has ever survived here, ever.  So get over yourself.”

Vanitas stood up and stuck out a hand in her general direction.  She stared at it, but she didn’t more.  Her eyes were still dull, grey, empty, like the stone walls surrounding them.  He decided he didn’t like them like that.

“Why should I come with you?”  She barely said.

He sighed heavily.  “We’ve been over this before.  If you want to keep rotting down here, fine, but I’m getting out.”

“...I don’t trust you,” she admitted.

“I don’t expect you to.” He shrugged, still offering his hand.  “So are you coming or not?  My arm’s getting tired.”

She took too long with her decision, not being considerate towards his tired arm. “…I’m coming.”  Finally she tried to stand up (though she wouldn’t accept his hand, stubborn girl), but her legs gave out and she fell to her knees.

He rolled his eyes.  “We’ll just camp here.  I don’t want to carry you out.”

“I’ll be fine…”

“No, you’ll fall over on one of those spikes and impale yourself.”  Vanitas summoned a few Floods and bashed them with his keyblade until HP orbs came out.

“Wait- _you_ were the one-?”

“Shut up and get better.”  He tossed a glowing green orb to her and stalked off.

“Where are you going?”  Aqua asked weakly.

Where _was_ he going?  He wasn’t really sure, but he didn’t feel like sitting, not right now.  If he sat down he might think about things.  Like the fact that he might actually want her to get better.

“I saw your sleeve back there.”  At least he thought he did; he hadn’t really been paying attention after he found her.

“Don’t bother,” she replied.  “I can’t fix it.”

He kept walking anyway.  The white tube of cloth hung in tatters from the point of a smaller jagged spire a few yards from their makeshift camp.  She was right; there was no point in saving it.  But for some reason he grabbed the shredded cloth anyway.

What he came back, Aqua had summoned a small orb of Fira and sat shivering behind it.

“You need some better clothes,” Vanitas said, sitting on the other side of her Fira and still holding her sleeve.  “Not that you had much to begin with.”

She glared at him, but she kept her temper in check this time.  “I live in a castle full of boys.  The only clothes I had belonged to Masters that had lived there decades ago, and what I made myself.”

“Which was that?” Vanitas nodded in her general direction.

“All that’s left are the borrowed parts.” She shivered.  “But I can’t make any new clothes without the proper materials.”

He looked her over.  He’d already seen that her skirt-thing was missing, and so were both of her sleeves, of course.  One of her pink chest-straps had snapped too.  What he hadn’t noticed before was that her shoes were also missing (how had she lost metal boots? Throwing them at the Heartless?), and her long black socks were crisscrossed with scars.  Her shirt was thick enough to weather cuts and scratches, but it had been singed on the left side.  Vanitas was slightly disappointed that she’d never been this damaged by any of her fights with him.

“Those won’t last another Heartless attack,” he said truthfully.

“They’ll have to,” Aqua replied, still shivering as the Fira cast flickering orange highlights and shadows across her face.  “This is all I have.”

“Maybe not,” he thought out loud.  “My suit was created from the darkness.  I might be able to do the same for you.”

“No!”  She objected immediately.  “I don’t want anything else to do with darkness.”

Vanitas shrugged.  “Fine, but if your clothes fall off while we’re fighting, it’s your problem.”

He wondered if it was just the tint of his mask combined with the glow of the fire, or if it was actually possible for her to blush blood red.  “My clothes aren’t going to fall off.”

“Stop acting like an idiot.  It’s not like a dark suit will hurt you, anyway.  If anything it will protect you from the darkness.”

“I don’t believe you,” Aqua huffed, “but I guess I don’t have much of a choice.”

“You still have a choice.”  He shrugged again.  “You can choose to go naked.  I don’t really care.”

She glared with more hate than he expected.  “You’re disgusting.”

“What?”  He was honestly confused; her eyes didn’t look that angry even when he insulted Terra and Eraqus.  “Am I supposed to care if you wear clothes or not?”

Now it was her turn to be confused.  “No. Wait, yes – ugh.”  She dropped her head into her hands, which had retained their fingerless gloves.  “People have to wear clothes.  End of discussion.”

“Okay, whatever.”  He still didn’t see what the big deal was.  He wore more clothes than her on a regular basis anyway, and it was only for the sake of protection (and because Master Xehanort had forbidden him from getting rid of them). But that didn’t sound like what she was worried about.  “So do you want a dark suit or not?”

“Fine,” she grudgingly agreed.  He suspected it was just to make him shut up.

“Move your arms.”  He pointed to where her arms were wrapped tightly around herself, trying to keep warm.

“Why?”  She asked suspiciously.

“Shut up and do it.  I’m running out of patience.”

She finally obeyed, and he placed a hand at the base of her neck, where her collarbones would meet if they weren’t covered by her shirt.  She flinched away.

“Don’t touch me!”

He rolled his eyes.  “How else do you expect me to make your suit?  Just be glad I’m letting you keep your shirt on; this would probably be easier without it.”  He couldn’t be sure since he’d never actually done it before, but it was another variable he had to deal with.

She gritted her teeth.  “I hope you know I still hate you.”

“I’d be offended if you didn’t, Aqua.”

He closed his eyes and focused on his inner darkness, sort of like when he would summon a dark corridor, only he coaxed it into forming thin navy-blue tendrils.  To make those tendrils grow, he had to reach out to her darkness, tearing a bloodcurdling scream from her lips.

“Suck it up, you’re fine,” Vanitas told her, his focus wavering.  The dark tendrils paused until he tugged at her darkness again.

“You said it wouldn’t hurt!”  She screamed.

“I said the suit won’t hurt.  I never said making it wouldn’t.”

She screamed again, but he gritted his teeth and pushed through it, making the organic tendrils split and wrap around her neck and arms.  Next he made them cover her back and chest, forming a pattern similar to the one on his own, before moving on to her waist and legs.  A ragged skirt, longer than his own, flowered of its own accord.  Her cries had faded to whimpers by the time he ended with pointed boots.

Aqua gasped for breath.  “You- you-”

“Yes, I’m a monster,” he drawled, remembering the previous time she’d called him that, back in Neverland.  In the Realm of Light.  It already felt like forever since he had seen a real sky.  “You can call me that when that suit ends up saving your life.”

“What life…?” She slid down the stone wall until she was almost lying down.  “I’m already dead…”

Vanitas stared at her sad grey eyes before they closed in fitful sleep.  _No appreciation.  No “thanks, Vanitas, for trying to stop me from getting myself killed.” I shouldn’t have bothered._

“You’re not dead, Aqua.  Not until I say so.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end of this kind of bothers me… *wince* Vanitas is still sadistic, and he also doesn’t understand things that come naturally to normal people, like privacy and modesty. So he really wasn’t purposely being gross at all… *sweatdrop*


	4. Shining Star

Vanitas tried to sleep, but it was difficult with that hovering orb of Fira flickering to the beat of Aqua’s dreams.  Or nightmares, more likely.  Panting gasps escaped her lips at irregular intervals, and she curled up on her side with her knees tucked to her chest.  The blue and pink skirt-thing flared out over her legs and the ground like a ragged blanket.

He didn’t realize he was staring until she shifted uncomfortably and ended up facing him.  He quickly shoved his helmet over his head, but her eyes were still closed.  Might as well leave it on, though, in case she did wake up.

Her arm relaxed from hugging her knees, brushing against something Vanitas hadn’t noticed hanging from the belt holding up her skirt.  Instantly her fingers curled around it, and the Fira calmed as her now-smiling lips parted in a whisper.

“Terra… Ven…”

The hairs on the back of Vanitas’s neck stood up when he heard the names.  Maybe he didn’t want her broken completely, but she shouldn’t be whole enough to care about those idiots.  What was that thing she was holding?

He tried to get a closer look, but her hand was clutched too tightly around it.  But he didn’t have to see it to smell the fresh scent billowing off it, or to notice the soft white glow through her fingers.

Vanitas quickly glanced up at the cliff ledges surrounding them and cursed.

“Get up.”  He shook Aqua as calmly as he could, considering there were hundreds of glowing yellow eyes staring down at them, slowly advancing as if they were confused.  Of course, he wasn’t worried for himself, but if the Heartless tried to take the one semi-interesting thing in the Realm of Darkness away from him, they’d better be ready to lose their worthless non-existences.

“Shh,” she whispered, eyes still closed.  “It’s not morning yet, Ven…”

“I am not _Ven,”_ Vanitas growled, kicking the blue-haired girl in the side.  She was lucky he pulled the kick slightly at the last minute – he didn’t care if she was dreaming or not; _no one_ called him Ven.

That finally woke her up, and the light from whatever she was holding went out.  Unfortunately, that didn’t stop the Heartless from jumping, crawling, and/or flying down the cliffs to find out where the light had gone.  Vanitas could still smell the sweet scent on her skin.

“Forget this.”  He summoned a Bruiser to scoop up the confused Aqua before any Heartless could attack her.  His Bruiser kept itching to crush her, too, and Vanitas’s attention was split between destroying Heartless and keeping the Unversed in check.

“She’s _mine,”_ he hissed, slicing through a Darkball that tried to chomp her.

After several minutes of slashing and bashing, the remaining Heartless finally got the hint and slunk back to whatever holes they had come from.

“Idiots,” Vanitas spat, dispelling his keyblade.

“Rah!” He finally heard Aqua shout, stabbing her own blade through the Bruiser’s chest and falling to the ground when its negativity was absorbed back into Vanitas.  “Nnghh…”

“I’m sure you put _so_ much thought into that.”  He rolled his eyes.  “You slept long enough.  We’re leaving.”

“Why did those Heartless attack?”  Aqua demanded, even though she was currently crumped on the ground, in no position to demand anything of anyone.  “You said this suit would protect me.”

Vanitas cocked his head, finally getting a good look at the object hanging from Aqua’s hip.  It was a metal-rimmed, stained glass star, simple but elegant in design, with a silver Keyblade Wielder symbol holding it together in the middle.  Its lighter blue color clashed with the darker shade of her new suit.  Aqua’s eyes narrowed, but before she could say anything, Vanitas told her, “That thing attracted them.  It has too much light.”

“Huh…? Oh.”  Her fingers held the star-shaped charm tenderly.  Vanitas’s skin crawled.  “The spell I put on it…”

“Get rid of it,” Vanitas ordered.

“What?”  Aqua balked.  “There’s no way I would do that!”

“It’s attracting Heartless.  You’ll get us killed.”

“It saved me from them once,” She argued.  “That’s more than this suit has done.”

Vanitas growled at having his suit insulted.  “My suit is worth way more than some stupid charm!”

Aqua’s face twisted furiously.  “I made that ‘ _stupid charm’_ myself, and it holds a bond that can’t be broken!  A bond between me and my friends!”

Vanitas scowled under his mask.  “And where are those friends now?”

He knew he’d struck a nerve when she grimaced and froze up, hand over her chest, where a dark mist wafted off of her suit.  Her anger and the darkness must be woven together more tightly than he thought.  It probably didn’t help that she’d never had so much of either to restrain before.  “They’re… safe…”

Maybe he didn’t want her consumed by darkness, but driving a spike through the heart of her friendships brought him a sick glee.  He laughed in a way that could only be described as demented.  “You call being in an eternal coma ‘safe’?  Or wandering the worlds with Xehanort hiding in your heart, is that safe?  Face it, Aqua, all you did was get yourself stuck down here where you can’t help either of them.  But maybe you’re better off this way.  At least they can’t take anything else from you.”

She was breathing heavily, clutching her star-shaped charm in one hand, the other still trying to hold in the darkness leaking out of her chest.  “They never took anything from me… I always gave from the light in my heart.  Something you wouldn’t understand.”

“And why would I want to?”  Vanitas retorted.  Her darkness was fading again, her voice steadying.

“So you could be loved,” she said with surprising calm.  Vanitas blinked, but to her his face would appear as unreadable as ever.  Thank the Void for his mask.

“Aqua, you don’t know anything about darkness.”

“I know more about darkness than you do about light.”

“I know plenty about light,” he argued.  She raised her eyebrows in disbelief.

“Then tell me, what does it feel like when light touches your heart?”

What light felt like in his heart?  There was only one time he had felt that – as he united with Ventus.  But that one time was burned vividly into his memory.

“It stabs like a hundred needles of fire embedding themselves in your heart,” Vanitas began in a slow cadence, voice low. “It burns like your whole existence is being consumed, like you’re nothing, like you’re less than nothing…” _And it was the best moment of my sick life._ Not that he would ever admit that to Aqua.

The light had torn him apart, put him back together again, and – once Ventus was gone – left him just as empty as before.  Light never stayed.  And it could never be trusted.

Vanitas turned away from Aqua before she could argue any more.

“I plan on actually getting somewhere today.  Try to keep up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not much going on in this chapter, but I enjoyed clarifying some character development. It’s going to take a long time for either of them to get past their stubbornness. Though they’re so different, I find it interesting that Aqua and Vanitas both share that and their pride as a couple of their main weaknesses.


	5. Crossroads

She kept his pace well, considering she still hadn’t completely recovered from having her darkness awakened and she also had to fight off Heartless around every corner.  But they were only the normal Heartless, just there because they had no better place to be, not specifically targeting Aqua for her light.  The dark suit had done its job in that regard.

As far as Vanitas could smell, they were making progress.  Very, very slight progress, but as they navigated the maze of pointed stones and walls they were leaving the heart of the Realm of Darkness.  Not the technical heart – they hadn’t been _that_ far in – but fairly close to it.

“Are you sure we’re not going in circles?”  Aqua asked.

“I’m more sure than you are,” Vanitas replied defensively.  The rocks did look pretty similar, but rocks were rocks.  It wasn’t like he expected much variety.

“That isn’t saying much,” Aqua mumbled.

“Do _you_ want to lead the way?”  He asked, more than a little irritated.  His sense of smell was the only compass they had to go by; what right did she have to question it?

They turned a corner, entering a room of sorts – the rock walls curved upwards to form a dome with a small skylight at the top.  That is, if there had been any light in the sky.  Two paths diverged on the opposite side of the room, one on the left with spikes jutting from the walls, one on the right shrouded in a dark mist so that Vanitas could only see a few feet into it.

Aqua immediately began walking towards the spiked path.

“Where do you think you’re going?”  Vanitas asked.

“Not _that_ way.”  She nodded in the direction of the darker path.

“Then you’re going the wrong way.”  He grabbed her wrist to pull her back on track, but she jerked away.

“That can’t be the right way.  It’s getting darker.”

“Look, your road’s going to get just as dark once you get in there, and you won’t be able to find your way back.  Stop being stupid and follow me.”  Vanitas headed off towards the darkness.

“No.”  Aqua stood firm, navy blue boots planted on the cold stone ground.

“Excuse me?”  He put his hands on his hips.  “This is _my_ world.  You don’t belong here any more than I belonged in the Realm of Light.  You won’t make it out without a guide and you know it.”

“I’ve made it this far,” she countered.

“Only because I saved your life.”

He knew she didn’t have a retort for that when she looked away, back towards the splitting paths.  “I go left.  You go right.  Then we’ll see whose path reaches an exit.”

“You won’t see anything if you’re dead.  And even if you somehow don’t die, you’ll be lost forever.”  Why did she have to be so stubborn about it?  He was right, and she was wrong.  It wasn’t complicated.

“Remember who it was that defeated you.  Several times over.”  Aqua’s voice was colder than her eyes, which glinted in the ambient blue light like chips of ice.  “I am a Keyblade Master, and I earned my rank.  Do not underestimate me.”

Her sharp tone set him off.  “When are you going to realize that doesn’t matter?  _Nothing_ from the Realm of Light matters here!  Heartless don’t care who you are!”

“I’m perfectly capable of-”

“Stop deluding yourself,” Vanitas snapped.  “Go left, fine.  Get yourself killed.  But don’t come crying to me when you find out what’s back there.”

“We’ll see,” Aqua replied with calm determination.  “You’ll see.  I won’t remain tied to the darkness.”

Vanitas rolled his eyes, not that she could see.  “Of course, _that’s_ what this is about.  You’re going to throw yourself at that monster’s feet for your pride.”

“Monster?”  That finally got Aqua’s attention.  “You didn’t say anything about a monster.”

“Did I need to?  I told you, there’s a mass of darkness through there.  Just because you can’t see it yet doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

But Aqua had chosen her path, and clearly her pride wouldn’t let her change course.  “Then I will defeat the monster, and leave this place a little lighter.”

“That’s not how it works, Aqua.  Aqua-!”

She was already heading into the spike-filled crevice.

“Fine!”  He yelled after her, probably drawing the attention of any Heartless in a mile radius.  “If you want to die, I don’t care!  I don’t need you!”

He didn’t.  He thought she might be an asset, or at least something of interest, but clearly the girl was nothing more than a liability.  She wasn’t worth his worry…

He stalked off towards the darker right path.  He didn’t need her… He’d known she would leave, just like every light did.

The only one he could trust was himself.

XXX

The thick, dark mist messed with his sense.  It numbed his suited skin with a cold, tingling sensation; it filled his nostrils with must and mildew.  It dampened the faint sound of his footsteps; it blinded his eyes so he could only rely on his palm against the wall for direction.  Even his mouth, when he tried breathing through it, tasted the darkness.  It was his element, but that wasn’t much of a comfort now, when it took away nearly all of his connections with the outside world.  He almost wondered if Aqua had been right.

Almost.  Even this dark mist had to be better than what she would go up against.  Whatever it was.

How long had he been walking?  Time never flowed consistently in the Realm of Darkness, so without any landmarks, it was impossible to tell.  The only indication he was making progress at all was the slow leftward curve of the wall.  Occasionally a Heartless’ glowing eyes illuminated a patch of darkness.  He kicked a few Shadows out of the way, and they skittered off.

“Stupid Heartless…” He conjured a Yellow Mustard out of his irritation, and it hovered shakily less than a foot in front of his face.  A spark jumped from it to Vanitas’s nose; he sliced the Unversed through with Void Gear only to feel his heart writhe as he reabsorbed the negativity.  “Can’t you idiots do _anything_ right?”

Much as he hated to form another incompetent Unversed, he wanted to see, so he produced a Red Hot Chili – at least those were a little less spastic.  It wasn’t as bright as the Yellow Mustard, but it was still a better lantern since it didn’t bounce as much.  It might be even easier to see if he removed his mask, but he’d rather keep the majority of the dark mist filtered out.

As the wall curved more sharply leftwards, it grew slimier and knobbier.  Thank Kingdom Hearts for his suit.  He wondered if Aqua appreciated hers as much… he doubted it.  Nothing would please that girl.  Not that he’d tried to.

_Don’t waste your thoughts on her.  She’s not worth it._

But honestly, there wasn’t much else to think about except how bored he was.  _Wonder if she found that giant Heartless yet.  It probably ate her for breakfast.  Is it breakfast time?_ His stomach had always felt empty since getting stuck down here, but somehow he knew he couldn’t die of hunger.  That was a good thing, since he doubted there was anything edible down here other than his Unversed’s or the Heartless’ HP orbs, which weren’t as much food as they were sustaining energy.

Vanitas stopped briefly and tried another scent check, but the mist was still interfering.  If anything, it smelled even darker now, sourer, more stomach-churning.  By the light of the Red Hot Chili he saw the knobby wall recede, thin out until it became spongy and porous.  But it wasn’t the wall that made him take interest; it was what he could now see through it.

“Aqua?”  He called in the brief second he could see, before the mist shifted again and enveloped the other keyblade wielder in darkness.  Was his mind playing tricks on him?  No, it had to be her, because otherwise this place was getting to his head…

He heard no reply.  Maybe she hadn’t heard.  Maybe she was ignoring him.  Maybe she thought _she_ was hallucinating.

He grabbed his flaming Unversed and shoved it against the sponge-wall.  It squirmed, but he held it tight between the wall and his chest.  He had to see something…

He didn’t.  Not by the light of his Red Hot Chili, anyway.  With an earthshaking roar, the yellow glow of two enormous eyes cut through the fog like spotlights, landing directly on Aqua.  Her glare and bared keyblade, flashing to life with a charge of light, said ‘ _do your worst.’_

“ _Aqua_!”  Vanitas yelled again.  She must have a death wish.  She didn’t know what that thing was – _he_ didn’t know what that thing was, just that it was pure darkness and pure evil, on a deeper scale than even the heart of darkness himself.  Vanitas could only hope it possessed less than a fraction of his human intellect.

The monster roared again; it reverberated in the walls.  Aqua’s battle cry was pitiful in comparison as she charged in the direction of the eyes, her dead master’s keyblade held high.

“Who does she think she is, Terra?”  Vanitas growled, pounding the wall with his fists, which bounced off harmlessly.  _She must really think she has something to prove… Or she’s just an idiot._

Vanitas couldn’t tell what exactly knocked Aqua off her feet.  She probably couldn’t, either.  Suddenly she was flying back, head cracking against the far wall.  The mist closed in around her –

Before he realized what he was doing, Vanitas was hacking at the spongy wall with Void Gear.  A few chunks squelched off, plopping to the ground.

“No _way_ is some stupid Heartless going to kill her without my permission,” he swore, throwing all of his weight into his strikes.  The Red Hot Chili hovered into his blade’s path and instantly lost its life; he barely registered the internal pain, and the glowing yellow eyes gave off enough light to keep hacking.

With a shout he finally carved out an almost-Vanitas-sized hole, which he ungracefully squelched through.  His head swiveled back and forth in search of Aqua, but all he saw was darkness.  And the eyes.  And the eyes saw him.

“I _really_ thought this through,” he muttered sarcastically.  In desperation he fired a powerful Dark Firaga at the eyes that sped towards him.  The attack was barely bright enough to illuminate the monster’s massive maw, which swallowed the Dark Firaga as easily as Ventus would have swallowed ice cream.

And Vanitas was about to be the next scoop.

He barely dodge rolled away from the stalagmite-sized teeth, which clashed together like nails on rock.  He realized he had been just as stupid as Aqua – where _was_ that girl?  The monster couldn’t have eaten her – _I mean, I_ said _it was going to eat her, but… nngh, why do I freaking care?!_

“Curaga,” a faint voice floated from across the cavern.  Vanitas was surprised he could hear her through the mist, and that she hadn’t been knocked unconscious.

The yellow eyes strayed from Vanitas, immediately locking their searchlight beams on Aqua, who stood without shaking.  So _now_ she could cure.  What was wrong with her before?

The monster was fast, but now that she was prepared, Aqua was faster.  She cartwheeled to the side and cast Thundaga, which bolted down on what Vanitas guessed was the monster’s skull.  Not willing to be shown up by the girl he was trying to save, he shot Dark Blizzaga into the side of its head, but it didn’t even flinch.  Its misty skin seemed to absorb it.

“That’s not helping!”  Aqua called, the first indication she’d even noticed his presence.

“Hey, don’t go whining when I try to save your life, _again,”_ Vanitas retorted.  “You could’ve-”

“Behind you!”

He stabbed backwards without questioning her, but it didn’t make a difference.  He’d stabbed right into the monster’s open mouth and barely pulled back in time to save his arm.

His keyblade wasn’t so lucky.  A shadowy outline of a Cheshire grin stretched wide across the monster’s face as it swallowed his weapon.

“Joke’s on you, idiot.”  Vanitas rolled his eyes, holding his palm out to summon Void Gear.

“What-?”  He clenched and opened his fist.  Still nothing.

Oh, he was going to _murder_ that thing.  …As soon as he figured out how.

“Get down!”

Aqua leapt at the monster in a frantic Time Splicer, leaving ghostly afterimages of herself as she attacked over and over again.  The monster momentarily froze, then once Aqua reappeared next to Vanitas, writhed from the multiple blows at once.

“I always hated that move,” Vanitas muttered.

“I know.”  Aqua sounded smug.  Almost like himself.  But they didn’t have time for that – the glowing eyes pounced at them both, and Vanitas’s keyblade still wouldn’t appear.  He was little more than a meat shield.

Aqua’s cartwheel faltered, and a plume of black mist form the monster’s maw choked her, hiding her from Vanitas’s sight.  He tried another Dark Firaga, Dark Thundaga, anything – why wasn’t it _working_?

“Enough!”  Aqua shouted, dispelling the dark cloud with a trio of flame-pillars – her Raging Storm command.  She coughed out smoke as the bright fire not only seared the Heartless – it allowed Vanitas to see it clearly for the first time.

He’d expected it to have a body.  Instead it was more like a massive Darkball – All face.  Hideous, ugly face, with a tangled mass of dark veins framing its yellow eyes and stalagmite-filled mouth.  Some of the veins had been cut open where Vanitas and Aqua (mostly Aqua) had damaged it, but each broken vein released more toxic smoke into the already-saturated air.

“Are you going to help me or not?”  Aqua asked, irritation and fatigue showing as she dodged and jabbed at the giant face.

“If you haven’t noticed, I’ve _tried,”_ he growled.  “We should run while we still can.  There’s an escape-”

She cried out as the giant jaws bit down on her arm, but her dark suit somehow absorbed most of the blow from the shadowy teeth, like how the Heartless’ skin had absorbed Vanitas’s attacks.  “No!  I started this, and I am going to _finish it!”_

Switching hands – her keyblade arm had been bitten, but the blade itself was fine – she flew into a combination of strikes and magic volleys, glowing purple when she activated her Spellweaver command style.

She was doing better than Vanitas gave her credit for.  Maybe all she needed to fuel her victory was something to prove, and someone to prove it to.

Still, Vanitas wasn’t about to let her one-up him, not when he’d told her she’d get herself killed without him.  But what could he do?  He was keybladeless; his dark attacks weren’t damaging it—

_Dark._ It was a higher class of Heartless, much darker than even himself.  Of course it would only absorb the dark attacks.  No wonder Aqua, with her brighter magic, was finally gaining the upper hand.

His non-dark magic was painfully unpracticed; Xehanort had never encouraged him to hone it.  His Thundaga and Firaga spells were so steeped in darkness, he wasn’t sure he could do them separately; Blizzaga was his best bet and easiest to cast without darkness’ influence.  The chunk of ice hit the monster’s back – if it had a back – and it roared at the unexpected pain, giving Aqua time to prepare her powerful Ice Barrage command, which added to the ice damage and unleashed her Bladecharge command style.

The monster Vanitas had thought was so powerful because of its overpowering darkness didn’t stand a chance.  The ice had slowed it down, and it couldn’t get close to Aqua without flinching away from the searing light enveloping her keyblade.

Yes, the monster was dark.  But its darkness had never been tested against the light, and now it received a rude awakening.

Vanitas didn’t bother pretending to be useful this time, other than to cast a much-needed Cure over both of them.  Then he stood back and watched as Aqua deftly spun her oversized lightblade and sliced it down between the monster’s yellow eyes.  Those eyes dimmed, dimmed until they melted into the darkness.  Unlike the Heartless from the Realm of Light, no heart floated out of its remains.  It had likely never had the opportunity to steal one.

While no heart came from the destroyed Heartless, something else did – Vanitas’s keyblade clattered to the ground.  Aqua, her command style glow fading, picked up Void Gear.  When she turned back to Vanitas, a tiny smirk graced her lips.

“Who saved who now?”

He snatched his blade from her, more comfortable with its weight in his tight fist.  “Boasting doesn’t suit you, Aqua.”  _Just because she got lucky one time…_

“I am confused about one thing, though,” she admitted, dropping her satisfied pride.  “Even if it was pointless, why didn’t you try to save me at all?  You said you didn’t care if I survived.”

Vanitas snorted.  His mind didn’t care.  The rest of him, for whatever reason, seemed a little more indecisive.  “Come on, Aqua.  You of all people should know better than to trust me.”

She gave him a wary look.  “Is that your way of admitting that I was right to choose my path?”

_My_ path, like she owned it.  Ugh.  With the monster gone, and the dark mist dissolving with it, he could tell that this path actually remained lighter from here.  It had been impossible to tell before; it wasn’t his nose’s fault that mist got in the way.

“No, I was just saying I lie.  But if you want responsibility for whatever other messes we get into, fine.  We’ll take _your_ path.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Though I don’t usually like writing battle scenes, this was rather fun chapter. C:


	6. Talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy more of Aqua and Van being jerks to each other. xP

The rest of the “day” (which was measured by however long they could walk before it felt like time for a rest) was rather uneventful.  Aqua kept trying to take the lead, and Vanitas adamantly refused to let her, so they ended up in a stalemate of walking side-by-side for the first time.

“Are you tired yet?”  Vanitas asked every once in a while, when the blanket of silence became too suffocating.

“No. Are you?”  Aqua would reply.

“No,” he scoffed.  Of course he wasn’t tired yet – it was a kind of internal challenge, trying to outlast her, especially after she had defeated the monster Heartless almost single-handedly.

This continued through the chasms, in spite of Vanitas’s aching feet.  Trying to distract himself, he asked, “How’s the suit?”

“Fine,” she replied, her mouth set in a firm, straight line.  He watched her pick at the veins on her arm from the corner of his eye.

“Itchy, isn’t it,” he mumbled, half to himself.  She jerked her hand back.

“I expected nothing else,” she said after a moment.  “That’s what darkness feels like.”

His boot caught in a crack in the ground, allowing her to get a few steps ahead.

“How would you know what darkness feels like?  Vanitas spat, catching up with a stumbling jog.

Her glare pierced his mask, but it was off slightly, targeted more at his forehead.  “How could I _not_ know?”

Of course she knew; they were stuck in the Realm of Darkness.  He just didn’t want to hear her description, have it beat into his head again how darkness was awful and painful and evil.

But at the same time, he was curious.  She didn’t know that he had a sick sort of longing for the light; could she secretly feel the same about darkness?

“What does it feel like, then?”

She rolled her eyes; clearly it was a dumb question to her.  But most likely for the sake of conversation, she entertained him.

“Look around,” she began, gesturing to the sheer stone cliffs jutting from the ground on either side, studded with dimly glowing crystals, twisting in jagged curves that didn’t always line up, so the path narrowed and widened at its own discretion.  “The Realm of Darkness explains it all.  Cold air, hard stone, paths that wind and create chaos and confusion – _that’s_ what darkness feels like.”  That actually didn’t sound so bad to Vanitas.  He was cold all the time, and confusion was only a problem if you thought about it.  “You know nothing truly alive lives here, right?  Life embraces light, like a plant always grows towards the sun.  And so the Realm of Light supports all living things.  Darkness only spawns Heartless and death.”

Her tone was clipped, her opinion set in stone that had been engraved her whole life.  So much for his theory.

“Yeah, well, you’re wrong about one thing.”  Vanitas replied, mainly to annoy her.

“And what’s that?”

_“We’re_ living here now.” He smirked behind his mask.  Like it or not, they were stuck here, at least for now.  And that meant she had to suck it up and deal with it.

“No,” she countered unexpectedly.  “We’re _dying_ here.”

“Everyone’s dying, Aqua, in darkness _and_ light.  You ever heard of the Circle of Life?”

“…This is different,” she still insisted.  “This place _drains_ life.  Without this suit, all the forces of darkness would combine to eliminate me.”

_Point one for Vanitas,_ he thought to himself at the indirect compliment on his suit.  He would’ve bragged, but he remembered one other thing about the Realm of Darkness that didn’t match her assumptions.

“If darkness really drains life, then how come we don’t need to eat here?  Time even feels slower.  For all you know, we could actually be immortal now.”  Not that he particularly liked the Realm of Darkness, but he felt obliged to stick up for it anyway, on principle.

“I…” Aqua looked down, but walked a little faster so Vanitas could only see the back of her head.  So he couldn’t see her struggle to come up with an answer.

“Give up yet?”  He asked, just as the exit of the chasms came into view.  Or at least, it looked like an exit – the space spread ahead, wide and flat, so the horizon was a straight line in the distance, like the line of Aqua’s mouth when she didn’t want to talk to him.

“We should camp here,” she said, ignoring his question.  “We’ll be too exposed if we need to stop out there.”

“If _you_ need to stop, you mean.”

She only sighed in reply.  Apparently he wasn’t worth her energy anymore.  She set herself down against the rock wall, not a very comfortable seat, but Vanitas couldn’t think of anything better.  Someday, when he got out of here, he’d buy himself the biggest, softest bed in the Worlds.  Or steal it, more likely.  But for now he settled for a spot against the wall next to Aqua.

“What I’d give to be home in the Land of Departure…” she murmured, gazing across the flatlands.  If he looked that direction and kept his eyes unfocused, he realized, the flat ground seemed to swirl and shift, like desert sand blowing in the wind.  Only there was no wind.

“What, you got a nice bed there or something?”  He asked, still trying to get comfortable.  Maybe he could blast out a hollow with Thundaga…

“Yes… well, there _was.”_ Her eyebrows creased.  “Before I transformed it.”

“…Are beds supposed to transform?”  He could create treasure chests that transformed into Unversed, but he didn’t think that was the kind of transformation she meant.

“No,” she gave him a glance with skewed eyebrows, “not my bed, the whole world.  I sealed it away, so no one can abuse the neutral ground.”

“Huh.”  Vanitas didn’t particularly care.  He’d only been to the Land of Departure once, for Terra and Aqua’s Mark of Mastery exam, and it seemed pretty boring.  Big and castle-y, but boring.  “Well, at least you had a bed to miss.”

He could _see_ the question surprise her, like she never imagined he would want a bed – and why should she?  He could read it in her tension, her snippy comments, her desire to be above him – she still saw him as little more than a monster.  A monster that had trained himself to walk and talk and argue with the best of them, but still a monster.

“I know, you just thought I sleep on rocks and in caves for fun, right?”  He challenged with bitter sarcasm.

“Not really…  I just didn’t know.”  She almost sounded sincere.  Even the blue of her eyes lightened a shade with sympathy, but it was probably just the glow from the crystals studding the chasm walls.  “I knew Xehanort was cruel, but I never knew he never even gave his apprentice a bed.”

“Yeah, well, not everyone gets a master who actually cares about them.”  He curled his knees to his chest instinctively, then kicked them back out when he realized how pathetic he must look.

Aqua turned her face from him, but he could still faintly hear her muse, “If things had been different… if master Eraqus had taken you in along with Ven… do you think we would be here now?”

It wasn’t as much of an inspiring question as she had probably hoped.

“No,” he spat, “because I’d be dead.”

“What do you mean?”

He rolled his eyes, but it had no effect. "I'm _pure darkness,_ idiot. He would have killed me before I could even summon my keyblade. It's Xehanort's fault I exist, but my darkness is my own, not his. A light-crazy master couldn't change that, so don't even bother."

Vanitas skulked off to the other side of the chasm, which wasn't that far away, but far enough to show that he was done with the conversation.

He wasn't going to change. He _couldn't_ change – so why bother fantasizing about it?

His helmet clicked against the grey rock when he lay down. She had won – he was finally tired.

XXX

Aqua woke him in the middle of the night – or at least Vanitas assumed it was night, because he still wanted to sleep, and she'd kept a fire burning.

"Your turn to keep watch," she told him, hardly bothering to make sure he was conscious before lying down herself. At least she'd been smart enough to schedule a watch, so they wouldn't be ambushed by Heartless again. Even if that had technically been her fault in the first place.

Vanitas sat up against the wall and stretched the ache out of his hardened muscles. Sleeping, not sleeping, it didn't matter – he wasn't actually tired, not in a physical, need-to-sleep sense. It was more of a constant fatigue that never seemed to fade, regardless of how much he slept. It was more of a distraction than anything. If he wanted to, he could probably never sleep again, just like he couldn't eat again – until they got out of here, anyway. Which they they _would._

The few Heartless he had to take out while on watch weren't enough to satisfy his boredom, nor were the meager HP orbs they dropped enough to dull his chronic aching. And there wasn't anything to even attempt to fill his vague hunger… Was there really _nothing_ down here to eat? The more he thought about it, the more his taste buds craved stimulation. Maybe it was real hunger, maybe a sick memory, it didn't matter. There had to be _something…_

His eyes and thoughts briefly flickered to Aqua, and he shuddered with disgust at himself. He may be a heart of darkness, but he was no _cannibal._

A second thought occurred to him, however. She'd been traveling alone long before being trapped here – could she have any leftover rations from the Realm of Light?

Shadow-silent, he crept towards her, mouth already starting to water with hope. A smile rested on her face and her chest rose and fell regularly, thanks to that stupid charm hanging from the belt around her waist. His hope nosedived when he realized there was nowhere she could be keeping items. Her sleeves and wrapped skirt could have been hiding places, if they hadn't long since been replaced by the dark suit and a new skirt-thing. But he knew from his own suit that there were no secret pockets; that's what dark corridors were for. Too bad those didn't work here.

He still couldn't believe Aqua would be completely empty-handed… the void in his stomach prompted him to think harder… and that's when he took a closer look at her chest. It was so much bigger and more weirdly-shaped than anyone else's that he knew. Chests were supposed to be flat and square, not round, right? And he could tell just by looking that his chest was much tougher, denser than hers. More solid. Hers was probably hollow inside instead of being made of muscle. His brain whirled with a frenzy of ideas. It made perfect sense – that _had_ to be where she hid her food. Maybe she even ate some while she was on watch, but more likely she would wait until she really, really wanted it, otherwise he'd see her chest getting smaller and figure out her secret. But he was ahead of her, 'cause he already knew. Well, she wasn't going to hog all the food for herself. Not on his watch. He reached for her chest –

And suddenly found his wrist in a vicegrip as he was flipped onto his back jujitsu-style, with Aqua now pinning him under her weight – he didn't expect her to be so heavy. Not that he'd expected to be flipped at all.

" _Never_ touch me," she snarled, which was rather ironic, as she was now the one touching him. A dark purple aura pulsed off of her in choking waves, but she made no effort to suppress it – she probably didn't even notice it was happening, focused as she was on drilling her lesson into Vanitas's helmeted head. The helmet didn't make a difference though; he could still feel her ice blue eyes burning through his mask, leaving spots when he blinked. _"Never. Especially_ not there."

The violent scowl on her bloodflushed face sent a bolt of fear down his spine. He had never seen her so furious, not even when he'd snapped Ven's keyblade and she'd called him a freak. This was something even deeper, even more personal.

"Sheesh, I didn't know you took your food so seriously," he mouthed off to disguise his fear. It also had the welcome side-effect of catching her off guard.

"Excuse me?" Her grip slackened with her composure, and he slipped out from under her and scrambled to his feet, brushing himself off.

"So what is it? Steak? Ice cream? Special Land of Departure food?" Fear wasn't going to get the best of him; he would still figure this out. One way or another.

She stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language. "What in the Worlds are you talking about?!"

"Your chest!" He pointed to it, and her face colored two shades redder. The darkness hadn't stopped pulsing from her, but it had settled a little, like the tide going back out after a storm. Now it neared high tide again. "Don't play dumb. I know that's where you're hiding it."

"Hiding _what?!"_

"Your _food,_ idiot! Why else would your chest be so big and weird?"

With her hands on her hips, she was somehow even more intimidating, not even counting her darkness that stuck in the back of his throat and smelled like decay and nausea. Was that how she usually felt about him and his smell? He hated to admit it, but he could understand why he disgusted her if that was the case. It was like he'd finally smelled his armpits after a lifetime without deodorant.

"Because I'm a _girl,_ idiot!" She even sounded like him. Forget anything he'd thought, he _didn't_ want her to turn to darkness. This was getting disturbing.

"What's that have to do with it?"

" _Everything!"_ You – you… really don't know, do you." The purple tide receded once more. Hopefully for the last time. He'd hate to throw up inside his helmet.

Ugh. In his desperation for food, he must have made a pretty serious mistake. He still had no idea what that mistake could be, except that it had something to do with being a girl. How was he supposed to guess that?

"You mean you _don't_ keep food in there?"

Aqua sighed deeply, but her darkness was finally under control. He wasn't sure if he should tell her and risk her letting it out again in her panic, or if he should just let the small victory go. Though it didn't feel much like victory anymore.

"No, I do not." She closed her eyes, and a momentary struggle seemed to wrack her before she took a seat. "Sit down, Vanitas. If I have to spend who knows how long with you, we need to have a talk."

XXX

By the end of Aqua's "talk," a few things finally made sense. Others were just more confusing. From what he understood, as long as he didn't touch her, everything would be okay, so he just filed the rest away and hoped he wouldn't be tested on it later.

"…any questions?" She finally ended, looking ready to throw up, yet relieved at the same time.

Vanitas stayed silent, letting his mask shield the confusion in his expression.

"Good." Aqua sighed. "Now, if you ever talk about this again, or light forbid, _touch_ me again, I _will_ kill you."

He found that fair enough. One warning was better than none.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah… wasn't intending on half of that happening, but this character development should come in handy later. Vanitas being completely naïve is dangerous.
> 
> Next chapter should involve more action, for those of you who liked the previous chapter.


	7. Pathless Plain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I enjoyed writing this chapter. C:
> 
> (Bonus points for anyone who gets the irrelevant reference in the chapter title :P)

After _that_ discussion, neither of them felt like sleeping.  The only real option was to take the awkwardness and walk it off.

“You get enough sleep?”  Vanitas asked Aqua before they headed into the vast, flat expanse.  She raised an eyebrow, like she found his concern amusing.

“I will be fine.”

“Good.  Once we get out there, I’m not stopping.”

His reversion to rudeness seemed to placate her.  “I don’t plan on it.”

“Then hurry up.”

This return to sense and order calmed him.  He was in charge; this was his domain.  Aqua’s worries and threats were irrelevant.  He was too important for her to kill, not to mention that she was too light-oriented to kill anyone.

Though that _had_ worried him… what was with her unusual spikes in darkness?  The Realm itself shouldn’t have done that much.  Could it have hidden in her heart, unawakened, for all these years?

And if it had been dormant before, there was only one reason he could think of for its sudden activity…

“I thought you wanted to leave,” Aqua snapped.

“That’s what we’re doing.”

With that, Vanitas took his first step into the flat waste.

XXX

There wasn’t any wind.  He’d known that somehow beforehand, even though the formless ground swirled in the distance.  His boots made shallow impressions in the dirt, leaving footprints that erased themselves several paces behind him, like the ground was trying to catch up.  As long as he kept up the steady pace, though, it never would.

“Good,” he mumbled under his breath.  Some paranoid sense warned him that nothing good would come of that.

“Hm?”  Aqua’s hearing was too good.

“…Nothing.”  He increased their pace.  The sooner they crossed this dark desert, the better.  At least his sense of smell was unhindered here – like a compass, it kept them on a straight path, even when the landmark of the chasms disappeared behind them, leaving only an endless sea of dust.

Aqua shuddered.  “I hate this place.”

“Join the club.”  Vanitas snorted.

“I think this is worse than the chasms.  At least there, there were paths to choose from.  Here, there’s nothing to direct us.”

“Hey,” Vanitas warned, “my nose is a lot more than ‘nothing.’”

She didn’t seem too convinced.  “Nothing I can see,” she corrected after a moment.

“So you just have to trust me.”  Vanitas smirked.  “You’ve got a problem with that?”

“Yes, obviously.”  She barely rose to his jab, which was too bad, because any sort of conversation was better than traversing the desert in silence, with no sun or landmarks or even a trail of footprints to mark the passage of time.  They might as well be walking on a giant, sandy treadmill.

With so few variations in scenery, his unfocused gaze again registered the slowly swirling earth in the distance.  Only it didn’t seem such a distance anymore.  Was it just an illusion?  Real deserts sometimes gave people hallucinations, but he thought that was from the heat.  It definitely wasn’t hot here.  The cold seeped from the earth into his boots, like the sand was a pit of tiny ice crystals.

The swirling pattern was definitely getting closer.  Or he was getting closer to it; it didn’t really matter which.

“Do you see that?”  He asked, still moving towards the sand formation, wanting to keep a good distance between himself and his faded footprints.

“See what?”  Aqua squinted at the distance.

“The sand,” he clarified, as if it wasn’t obvious.  What else was there to looking at?  “Something’s not right about it…”

“Are you saying we’re going the wrong way?”  She prodded.  He took a deep whiff.

“Stop doubting me.  It’s definitely lighter this way.”  Still, his eyes might not be as reliable as his nose, but he could feel something… off.  Not dark, just off.

They might actually walk over it…

“We should stop,” he said, suddenly thinking that might be the lesser of two evils.

_“You_ were the one who said we’re not stopping,” Aqua retorted, keeping her stride.  “Come on.  We can’t go back now.”

She was right about that.  There was nowhere else to go, and the ground kept gobbling footprints behind them.

“We can go _around_ it, genius,” he pointed out when the obvious thought came to him.

“Go around what?  I don’t even see it.  Are you sure your mask isn’t playing tricks on you?”

He wasn’t _sure,_ but he sure wasn’t going to take it off and check.  “Whatever.  If you’re so sure, keep walking.”

“I just want to get out of here, same as you.”  Her boots trailed through the sand, losing momentum.  Vanitas froze, but she kept going, straight into the swirling ground, which was _definitely_ not an illusion now.  Like a viscous liquid, it swirled over the tops of her feet, ankles…

“What?”  She tugged, but the ground was like lead – heavy and very solid, at least when trying to get out.  “ _This_ is what you were talking about?  Why didn’t you say it was quicksand!?”

“Why didn’t you _see_ it was quicksand?  I told you to look!”  He shot back.  There was no point in admitting he’d never heard of this ‘quicksand’ before.  He was mainly going on his gut, and his gut had been wrong last time.

“…Maybe your mask did help you see it more clearly.”  She took a deep breath, regaining her calm before her darkness could rear up and attack.  “Would you please pull me out?”

Vanitas’s eyes narrowed, not that she could see.  “Is this a trick?”

“No!”  Aqua summoned Master Keeper and tried to use it as a lever to push herself out, but it simply started sinking as quickly as she was.  “Vanitas, please.”  Her eyes shone big and blue, full of light, the way he remembered them from the other Realm.  “I… need your help.”

A smirk slowly rose to his lips.  Here she was, completely at his mercy, and even better – she knewit.  “Heh.  That you do.”

He braced his feet as solidly as he could on the unstable sand, careful not to slip towards the even less stable part.  His footprints had completely vanished.  Nothing he could do about that now, though. 

When he reached for her hand, she accepted it with no hesitation.  So he was right about being too important to kill.  It was still weird, though; Aqua always kept her promises.

“Nngh… how did you put on weight if you don’t have any food?”

She scowled in offense – not the ‘you-tried-to-touch-me’ offense, a little less disgusted than that. “It’s not weight!  Obviously the quicksand is pulling me!”

“Hmph, could’ve fooled me…”  He muttered, still vaguely irritated at the lack of food.

“Are you stronger than a little sand or not?”  She goaded him.

“No stupid desert’s getting the best of _me_.”  He gritted his teeth, dug in his heels, and pulled.  The quicksand seemed to give for a second before Aqua sunk even faster, up to her knees now.  He could’ve sworn he heard deep, mocking laughter seeping out of the ground.  _Maybe I am losing it._ “C’mon… Aqua’s _mine,_ you stupid sand…”

“I’m not—ngh.”  She cut herself off, probably realizing it wasn’t the smartest idea to argue with her only chance of survival.  “It’s not working,” she finally admitted.  “Let me try something else.”

“Like what?”

She started spamming commands recklessly – Curaga, Ice Barrage, Triple Firaga, Elixir, Fabracadabra—

“You _do_ have food!”  Vanitas practically howled at the sight of the magically-appearing tricolored ice cream.  _“Liar!”_

“Oh, like you’ve never lied before!”  She shot back.  “And besides, I actually _forgot!”_

“Give it!”

“Vanitas, we’re in the middle of a situation!  I’ll gladly share later!”  She took a bite (from the spoon that also magically appeared) and became surrounded with a purple glow.  “Come on, Spellweaver…”

She sank even faster as she spammed more attacks, trying to trigger her Finish.  It only made her sink faster – and if she sank, there went his only food source.  He wasn’t waiting for that to happen.

He dove for the ice cream, not considering the consequences.

“Vanitas, no-!”

He snatched the bowl, turned away from her, and dissolved his mask just long enough to dump the ice cream into his wide-open mouth.

“Ah.”  He burped, feeling purple and tingly himself.  Could he do the same twirly attacks as her under the food’s influence?  Whatever, he didn’t need to; his stomach and taste buds already felt like singing.

…Though they did feel a little less like singing when he realized he was now ankle-deep in quicksand.  He cursed.

“Didn’t think that through, did you?”  Aqua rolled her eyes, Spellweaver’s glowing aura gone.  “And could you please watch your language?”

“The ground’s eating you, and you’re worried about my _language_?”

She was buried up to her hips now, he up to his calves.  All around were flat, empty swirls of sand, shimmering like oil spills.  No one and nothing that would save them.

“So what do we do now, wait to die?”  He asked bitterly.  He would’ve rather died for real when he had the X-Blade, under the light of Kingdom Hearts, instead of here, helpless and in the dark.  Literally.

Aqua squinted up at the sky.  “I think we have company.”

Sure enough, five Wyverns were circling overhead like giant, demonic vultures.  “Probably coming to devour us while we can’t escape.”

“But they’re Heartless,” Aqua said.  “Heartless don’t need to eat.”

“They eat other Heartless and absorb their hearts,” Vanitas explained, summoning Void Gear as the first Wyvern dove.

He was stuck from the legs down, but he could still use his arms, and keyblade, just fine.  The Wyvern _skreed_ and flew back to its flockmates when it realized he wasn’t such an easy prey.

“You come up with a plan to get us out of here!”  Vanitas called over the agitated _skrees_ of more Wyverns diving to avenge their brother.  “I’ll hold them off!”

“Umm…”  That wasn’t comforting.  Where was the Aqua who had all the answers – or at least acted like it?

He couldn’t help her.  He was busy enough shooting Wyverns out of the sky from his stationary position.  Dark Thundaga worked well, but he had to wait too long for the command to reload, so he supplemented that with old-fashioned cuts and slices whenever they grew brave enough to swoop within range.  “Got anything yet?”

“Working on it!” 

What?  She was eating _another_ ice cream – this time one that triggered Ghost Drive.  Her phantom teleport-jumps succeeded in getting her calves free, before the sand reacted by sucking her back down more greedily than before.

“It’s no use!”  She finally said.

“Shut up!”  He snapped back, killing the last Wyvern with a bolt of Dark Thundaga.  “Is it alive or something?  Can we attack it?”

She glanced towards her keyblade, which had sunk to its hilt.  “I don’t think so.”

“There has to be something!”  Vanitas yelled.  Maybe they could’ve clung to the Wyverns and gotten pulled out.  Too bad he’d killed them all.  “I’m not dying here… not like _this._ At least give me one last Boss Battle…”

“Vanitas,” Aqua said softly.  She had sunk to just below her chest, but in spite of the reason to be terrified or furious, it wasn’t darkness that clung to her.  Light sparkled in the depths of her blue eyes, clean and pure.  “In case… we don’t get out… Thank you.”

“Don’t think about that!  Don’t thank me!  We’re getting out!”  He clawed at the sand surrounding his waist, but it tugged at his fingers too.  Punching didn’t help.  Blasting Firaga and Thundaga and Blizzaga didn’t help.  Screaming didn’t help.  But he tried them all anyway.

“Vanitas!”  Aqua called above his screams, finally getting his attention when he stopped to gasp for breath.  “Please.  Let me thank you…”

“ _Why?”_ He snarled, but it gave way to breathless panting.  “I didn’t save you _…_ I can’t even save myself.I’m no hero, Aqua.”

“But you tried to be.”  Was that the glistening of tears that made her eyes gleam brighter?  No – well, yes, but it was also the light, he could smell it.  Fresh, clean, soothing.  If… he did have to die… it wouldn’t be such a bad scent for his last breath…  “You didn’t have to save me, but you kept trying anyway… thank you.”  She wiped under one eye, with the one arm she’d managed to hold above the earth.  “I _do_ believe you have light in you.  And… I’m sorry my pride led us here.”

“I… Aqua, don’t be stupid…”

Up to her collarbone.  That arm was dragged under, from the shoulder up.  “Maybe it won’t be so bad.  If I haven’t lost my chance at heaven…”

_No, Aqua, you idiot, don’t go to heaven, don’t go and leave me here…_

“Shut up.”  A desperate idea came to him.  It might not make a difference.  But if it didn’t work for her, it wouldn’t work for him, and then he would die anyway.  So it didn’t really matter, did it?  “You’re going to live.”

He yanked off his helmet, shaking out his crumpled spikes of hair.  Aqua gasped, mouth open shamelessly.

“You – you have a _face_ …?”

He crammed the helmet over her head, sealing the gap around her neck with thick darkness, the same way he’d crafted her suit.  “Not as ugly as you thought, huh?”

He couldn’t see if she was gaping, or wincing, or gagging.  At least he knew that his helmet did in fact hide facial expressions – all he could see was his own determined reflection in its thick glass.  Still, he hoped, if he could see her face… maybe, just maybe, there was a glimmer of respect there.

He could dream.

“Vanitas, wait—I _know_ that face!”  She was too deep – neck, chin – soon she wouldn’t be able to speak.  Why was she wasting words on this?  Shouldn’t she recite some final wish for Terra and Ventus, her friends?  “Who are you?  Really?”

He scowled.  There wasn’t time for an interrogation.  “I’m a heart of darkness.  When I see you on the other side, feel free to tell me who you think I am.”

“You’re not all darkness!  I know it!  Vanitas—”

Did she realize that if this didn’t work, the last name on her lips would be his?  He couldn’t help a spark of… some not-painful emotion at the thought.

“Save your breath.  You’ll need it.”

He’d been so focused on her that he’d hardly noticed the sand sucking steadily downwards, now lapping at his shoulders.  Cursing, he began to weave himself a new viewless helmet, much cruder than his original, but hopefully it would serve its purpose.  Aqua’s gasping breaths kept distracting him, making the black tendrils shudder and lose their momentum in spite of the abounding negativity – panic, fury, spite – that fueled them.  He was almost thankful when the hungry sand finally closed over the top of her head.

Sand tickled his neck.  A Flood jumped out of him in shock – he wasn’t used to anything touching exposed skin, anywhere.  He quickly spread his tendrils to cover the gap.

Complete darkness.  A heart of darkness, with a helmet-cocoon of dark tendrils, drowning in the Realm of Darkness.  He could breathe, though, for now.

Still sinking; he could feel it.  Submerged.  Still alive.  Still breathing.  Breathing, but not moving, crushed with sand, so heavy…

_But I’m okay… I’m alive…_

Bright spots like stars tickled the backs of his eyelids.

_I’m alive…_

_I’m…_

_alive…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any thoughts on Aqua and Vanitas's character development? Does it make sense? Aqua especially gets somewhat difficult for me to write in this universe because of everything she gets put through, at different times she seems to handle things differently.


	8. Familiar Face

Vanitas awoke to the pain of having an entire Aero spell shoved down his throat.

“What the-” his curse was eaten by heaving coughs as his body fought to expel the excess air.  “What was that for?!”

Aqua leaned over his limp form.  “You nearly suffocated to death.  It was either the Aero spell, or mouth to mouth resuscitation.  The choice was obvious.”

“What’s wrong with mouth to mouth?”  He smirked, just to push her personal-space buttons.  She scowled.

“Don’t smirk at me.”

“I can smirk if I-” Wait.  She could see-?  His hands flew to his face, feeling soft, vulnerable flesh instead of his cold, hard mask.

“Where is it?!”  Even the base of it had vanished, no longer protecting his jaw.  “Why did you take it?!”

“This?”  She retrieved his helmet from the ground behind her.  “You gave it to me.  To save my life.”

“Why would I…” Memories slowly drifted back.  The quicksand.  Both of them trapped.  About to die.  Why didn’t they die…?  He rubbed his head, still slightly surprised to find hair there and not hard plastic.  “…Did you cast some sort of spell on me?”

“Not at all.”  She smiled; her fair skin glowed against the surrounding blackness, like she was the only light in the room.  Or whatever space they were in.  “You did something good of your own free will.  Out of the kindness of your heart.”

“Pfft.  What kindness?”  He spat, trying to snatch his helmet, but his arms dropped back at his sides with a pathetic _thud._ Still too weak.  “And why are _you_ fine?”

“Your helmet protected me much better than that improvisation did for you.”  She picked up a shard of something that looked like a piece of his suit, only thicker, more plastic-like.  Had that been the pseudo-helmet he’d tried to protect himself with?  “And as for what kindness… the kindness you have buried, deep inside of you.  You saved my life.  You proved it.”

“Pfft,” he scoffed again, sounding like a leaking tire.  “I saved you before.  Didn’t mean anything then.”

“Back then, you had nothing to lose.  This time, you sacrificed your own chance at safety.”

Hmph.  Apparently nothing would convince her.  …If he was honest, he wasn’t convinced himself.  “I must’ve had my head screwed on wrong.”

At that, she _laughed._ Actually laughed.  He could’ve sworn the room lit up at the sound...  He was right; his head _was_ screwed on wrong.

“There’s nothing wrong with helping someone, Vanitas.”

_“Helping others is the surest path to destruction,”_ Xehanort had always beaten into him.  Xehanort was an idiot.  But what was Vanitas supposed to do, uproot everything he knew?  Everything he ever was?

“…Hmph.”  He cursed his lack of a snarky comeback.  That was one part of himself he could usually fall back on when other parts were uncertain.  He blamed it on the near-death experience.  “Where are we, anyway?”

She brushed sand off of his helmet, and he again wished he weren’t so weak.  He couldn’t believe her, touching his helmet like it was hers…  “Underground, as far as I can guess.”  She looked toward the low ceiling, which shed sand from fragile stalactites.  “We sunk through from up there.”

“Great,” he deadpanned.  He’d have to get a scent-reading on the light again, assuming he even could this deep underground… But first things first.  “Give back my helmet.”

“Why?”  She asked, like a stubborn child jealously guarding a favorite toy.

_“Why?_ Because it’s mine!”

“…You look better without it,” she finally said, after staring at him for an uncomfortable moment.  He could hardly stand her gaze, unprotected as he was.  _“Not as ugly as you thought, huh?”_ he’d commented when he’d given it to her.  He remembered now.  “More… human,” she clarified, and he scowled.

“Well, I’m _not_ human.  I’m—”

_“A heart of darkness,”_ she mocked, rolling her eyes, and still not handing over the helmet.  “Yes, I got that.  But I don’t believe it.  Do you know whose face you have?”

That sparked his attention, even if he wouldn’t admit it.  She’d said something about recognizing his face before.  He looked nothing like Ventus, his other half, so why would recognize him?  _How_ could she?

“My own,” he replied stubbornly.  He felt naked without his mask, like her bright blue eyes could drill a hole through his skull.

“I met a boy on a world called Destiny Islands.  He couldn’t have been more than four years old, but his face was a mirror image of yours.  Except his hair was brown and his eyes were blue.”

Vanitas rolled his own very gold, very not-blue eyes.  “Sounds like you’re losing it to me.  A four-year-old?  Come on, Aqua.”  He didn’t mention that technically he was only four himself, if he was counting the time split from Ventus.

“I’m serious,” she still sounded convinced.  “I noticed him because of the light in his heart.  His name was Sora.”

_Sora._ His head spun at the name; his heart felt punctured by an arrow of light.  It was just a name!  Some dumb kid’s name; why was he having this reaction—?

_“Hey.  Can you hear me?”_

He jolted upright at the young voice.  A voice that, oddly enough, sounded like a happier, higher-pitched version of his own.  “What—who…?”

Somehow he knew it wasn’t speaking to him, but he heard it all the same.  Like a fragmented memory, like something hidden in the other half of his heart…

“Ventus,” he muttered.  “Ventus knows this _Sora.”_

“Ven…?”  A wistful look swept over Aqua’s expression.

“Yeah.”  The scowl stayed planted on his face.  He didn’t mind if she saw that.

“I’m sure there’s a connection somewhere,” Aqua said, and he glared.

“You just want me to be more like Ventus, don’t you?  Even if you have to make it up.”

“Vanitas,” she said in exasperation, “I never said you were anything like Ven.  I said you look like Sora.  Don’t put words in my mouth.”

The name didn’t hurt as much the second time.  The whole situation was still ridiculous, though.  No sense at all.  Which was why he argued for the sake of arguing; it helped him keep some handle on himself.  Who he was.

Before his time in the Realm of Darkness with Aqua, he never would’ve questioned himself.  Who he was, his purpose, who he would become – all was wrapped in a tidy X-Blade shaped package.  He was the heart of darkness, created to wage war against the heart of light.  And now apparently even those distinctions were slipping.

Why couldn’t he have just let Aqua die?

“…I need more rest,” he finally said, lying back on the sand-dusted ground.  A dollop of sand dripped from a stalactite, landing on his forehead, but he couldn’t even find the strength or motivation to wipe it off.

Aqua gently did so for him.  For as much as she preached against touching, the contact with another living being felt… comforting.  It took him a while to label the foreign feeling, by which time she had kindled a warm, floating fire.

“Then rest,” she said softly, finally placing his helmet down beside his head.  “You deserve it.”

“Heh.”  He smiled a little, watching his reflection in the plastic window of his mask.  Black hair, gold eyes.  She was right – he did look pretty good.  Maybe he didn’t need to hide that, now that she’d already seen it for herself.  For now, anyway, he just let his eyes slide shut, slipping into a silent sleep.

For once, it felt good to get what he deserved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sora's line of dialogue is what Ventus heard when he let his heart go into Sora's after fighting Vanitas.


	9. Breakfast of Champions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you wondering why the sudden lack of updates on Will Prank For Food, I was in Europe for two weeks. With me being on the next-to-last chapter of that ‘fic, I wanted to wait until I had internet access to make sure I didn’t screw up any important plot stuff and cross-references. Meanwhile, I drafted about three chapters of this story in my notebook, so I’ll probably type those up before trying to tackle WPFF again.

“Good morning.” Aqua’s oddly cheerful voice woke him.  He yawned loudly, stretching out and rolling over onto his stomach.

“Five more minutes…” he muttered, only to realize he wasn’t actually tired.  For the first time he could remember, he had slept peacefully.  Even the cold, sand-dusted ground hadn’t leeched the warmth from his muscles.

“Alright, but breakfast might be gone by then.”

Vanitas shot up.  “Breakfast?”

Aqua laughed, holding out a stick of blue ice cream that, for some incomprehensible reason, looked like it had a duck bill.  Whatever, Vanitas was too hungry to care if his food resembled an aquatic bird.  He snatched it out of her hand and scarfed it down in two gigantic bites.

“Whoa.”  He touched his mouth, feeling a fizzy sensation on his tongue.  It was a little salty too, but still delicious. 

“Try running around,” Aqua told him.

“What?  Why?”

“You’ll have to see for yourself.”  She crossed her arms and leaned back against the wall.

Rolling his eyes – he kept forgetting she could actually see that now – he stood up and took a few steps.  That fizzy sensation on his tongue spread through his whole body, all the way down to his toes.  It filled him with some weird energy, and he suddenly started running.

“So _that’s_ what that looks like.”  Aqua stared at him, amazed.

“What?  You already saw me without my – ohhh.”  He looked back, where a few ghostlike imprints of himself remained, like visible memories.  When he reached out to touch one, it dissolved through his fingers.

“I use this ice cream as an item when I’m in battle,” Aqua explained.  “That’s why I never thought to share it when you asked for food.”

Fine… he grudgingly admitted that it made sense.  Maybe he could forgive her for it, if he was the forgiving type.  Which he wasn’t. 

“Wait, how did you get _ice cream_ for an item?”  He asked, raising his eyebrows.  _He’d_ never gotten ice cream for items, only stupid potions that tasted bitter and gross.

“This little duckling named Huey made it for me, out of – Unversed!”  She remembered.

“What!?”  Vanitas burst out, wondering if he should throw up.  Had he just cannibalized his own emotions?

“When I fought your Prize Pod Unversed, all of these strange ingredients spilled out,” Aqua clarified.  “Somehow the ducklings knew how to turn them into ice cream.  Unfortunately, they’re not here to make any more, and that Donald Fizz I gave you was my last one.”

Vanitas just stared at her as the ghostlike glow around him faded away.  “You ate ice cream that _ducks_ made for you out of _Unversed._ And you think _I’m_ crazy?”

She frowned, scratching at her suit around her forearm.  “I suppose when you put it that way… I didn’t think much of it at the time…”

But wait – forget how ridiculous it was.  He could still make Unversed.  He could still make Prize Pods.  Could that mean—?

“Do you think we could make ice cream?”  He asked excitedly.

Aqua’s eyes widened, and she covered her mouth – but not before he could see that she was laughing at him.

“What?”  He scowled.  “It’s a perfect plan.  How else can we get food down here?”

“No, Vanitas—” she composed herself, “You just had this big grin on your face.  It was—” She suddenly stopped.

“What?”  He prodded suspiciously.

“Never mind.”  Her gaze retreated to the ground.  Maybe after being so open with him, she’d finally remembered who she was talking to.  A heart of darkness.  A heart of darkness who really, really wanted some more ice cream.

“Whatever.  So do you think we can do it or not?”

She frowned thoughtfully.  “I’ve seen them make it before, though I’m not sure I can replicate it…”  She took one look at the annoyance and disappointment he radiating off his exposed face.  “But I guess it’s worth a shot,” she amended.

That was good enough for Vanitas.  He didn’t make Prize Pods often; it took him a moment to focus on the emotions necessary to conjure them.  It took a strange combination of hunger and nostalgia that he’d accidentally stumbled upon when he was first learning to form his Unversed.

Xehanort had never fed him.  Vanitas wasn’t sure the old geezer had known he needed food.  Definitely not at the very beginning, when he barely had a face, when he had still been processing through the pain of Ventus’s memories.  That’s when he’d found it – the one particular memory Vanitas couldn’t stand.  His – Ventus’s – mother had taken him to an amusement park.  She had never been able to afford much, but it was his sixth birthday, and she made it the most special day in all the Worlds.  Bought him a bar of sea-salt ice cream, stuck a candle in the top, sang _happy birthday to you—_

The past memory of so much love.  The present feeling of his starving body.  Wishing on memory-Ventus’s candle that everything would end, that this all could go away –

Aqua gasped as the bulbous purple Unversed tore themselves from him.  Vanitas shook, but he kept his focus on the memory, until ten Prize Pods were fully formed.

“Vanitas…?”

He clenched his eyes shut, swaying dangerously.  In his hunger for ice cream, he’d ignored how much those particular Unversed took out of him.

When he nearly collapsed, he was shocked to feel Aqua’s arms catch him.  “Van, are you okay?”

He still had enough energy to snarl, “Did you just call me Ven?”

She looked taken aback.  “No.  I called you Van…” she trailed off in some sort of dazed confusion.

It sounded too much like Ven.  But at the same time, why did the shortened name make him feel just the tiniest bit… warmer?

He shook his head, struggling to stand on his own two feet.  “Forget it.  Let’s just get those…”

His head swiveled, scanning the room.  No Prize Pods in sight.

He bit back a curse.  When he’d accidentally made Prize Pods before, his instinct had been to hide them.  After all, what would Xehanort do if he found out his apprentice had created an Unversed that couldn’t even attack?  Unfortunately, now that he needed them, they must still have the instinct to flee and hide.

“Idiots,” he muttered.  “Come on.  I’m not letting all that energy go to waste.”

Aqua still looked at him in concern.  “Are you sure you’re up for it?”

“Don’t insult me.”  He glared.  Making Unversed used to be his job, his life.  Sure, some were more painful to conjure than others, but he didn’t need her pity.  He knew what he was doing.

Still, she sighed.  “Suit yourself.  I think they went that way.”

She pointed down a tunnel that branched off of the sprawling, low-ceilinged room.  There wasn’t a sign of the Unversed, of course, and the Realm’s darkness interfered too much to track them precisely, but his slight connection with his disobedient creatures pulled him on.

He darted down the tunnel with Aqua close on his heels.  Unfortunately, as the tunnel sloped downwards, it became clear that this was some sort of drain for the sand dripping from the stalactites above.  It wasn’t nearly as bad as the quicksand, but the lack of traction did slow him down.

“Does it… always hurt that badly?”  Aqua asked as they ran.

“Is this about my Unversed again?”  He grumbled, irritated for some reason he couldn’t explain.  “Why do you care?”

“Because… I’ve never seen you look so…”

“So what?”  He snapped, glancing over his shoulder.

Reluctantly, she finished, “So… helpless.  In so much pain…”

His first instinct was to stop, spin around, and punch her in the face.  He settled for only doing the first two.

_“Never_ call me helpless again,” he snarled, jabbing a finger at her sternum.  With his outburst, a weepy-eyed Mandrake peeled itself out of him.

Aqua jumped back when the Unversed instinctively lashed out at her.  Just as instinctively, she swiftly destroyed it with Master Keeper.

Vanitas tried to hide his slight flinch, but without the protection of his mask, his pained grimace was on full display.  Just as he was about to summon his protective headgear, Aqua spoke up in concern.

“Vanitas?  Did something happen…?”  She vaguely reached towards him.

“Why do you keep pretending you care?”  He shoved her hand away.  “A few weeks ago, you would’ve been _delighted_ to see me in pain.”

“A few weeks ago, you hadn’t saved my life,” she retorted, concern making way for defensiveness.  “I didn’t know you were human then.”

Vanitas laughed, a short, disbelieving outburst.  “It’s the face, isn’t it?  What, does it make you feel guilty?”

“No,” she replied reflexively, but she squirmed under his yellow gaze.  Maybe he was more vulnerable without his mask, but in a way he was more powerful, too.  He’d stumbled upon a new method of manipulation.  After all she’d done with her piercing, light-filled eyes, he savored the turning of the tables.

“I just…” she continued, struggling a little for the words. “I _don’t_ want to see you in pain, Van.  Things have changed; can’t you see that?”

There it was again.  Van.  The nickname made his skin tingle; he shook his head to rid himself of it, but she must have thought it was in response to her question.

She sighed.  “You don’t have to believe me, but it’s true.  I just thought… if you told me about it, I might be able to help you stop hurting.”

He snorted.  Was she for real?  No one had ever cared if he hurt or not.  _Especially_ not her.

“…Well for one, you could not brutally murder my Unversed,” he finally muttered.  Since she was so intent on asking.

“What?”  She asked, head tilted in confusion.

“Stop killing my Unversed,” he repeated more loudly.

“It hurts you… when I destroy Unversed?”  She could barely seem to comprehend it.

“It’s not rocket science.”  With a wave of his hand, a tendril of darkness, he conjured a Flood.  “They’re made out of my emotions.  This one’s Annoyance.”  The annoyance he was felling towards her, specifically, but he didn’t say that out loud.  “You kill it, and you’re killing a part of me.”

Her eyes widened in shock.  “You mean I-!?”

“Shut up, it doesn’t really _die,”_ he clarified.  The Flood tried to swipe at her; she hopped back.  “It hurts like it’s dying, but it returns to me.  So I also get a nice burst of Annoyance back with that pain.”

She just stared at him, unsure of what to say.  He’d expected as much; how could she react to knowing she’d practically murdered hundreds of pieces of him?

“I…had no idea,” she murmured, eyes glued to the sandy ground, where Annoyance was twitching, irritated that its master was keeping it from attacking her.  “…I’m sorry.”

He snorted, absorbing the Flood with his outstretched hand.  It didn’t hurt that way, but he never particularly enjoyed getting those negative emotions back.  “Don’t lie to me.  Maybe things have changed now, but you still would’ve killed them then without even blinking.”

The guilt returned to her blue eyes… but he found he couldn’t savor it.  Instead, it only left a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach.  Which he still needed to fill – with ice cream.

“But that’s what Xehanort had me create them for.  The perfect replaceable punching bag.”  _No matter how much those punches hurt,_ he thought bitterly.“Forget about it.  You did your job, and I did mine.  Now let’s go get ice cream.”

He continued down the tunnel at a slower pace than before, since the sand had started to settle thicker along the floor.  Still, even though he had clearly closed the subject, she wouldn’t drop it.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you just forgave me,” she said in disbelief.

He shrugged, breaking off the tip of a sandy stalactite that hung in his way.  “It’s not forgive.  Just forget.” 

She didn’t seem to have a response for that, which was fine with him.  Explaining his feelings – or rather, figuring out those feelings for himself – was too much effort.

“How far are those stupid Prize Pods?”  Vanitas muttered, mostly to himself.  The tunnel widened out, flattened out into another shallow, stalactite-covered room.  For all he could tell, it was the same room they’d started in.  But they’d been going down the whole time, right?  It couldn’t have been a circle…

Aqua flitted around the room, peering around stalactites that hung just at her head level.  Vanitas didn’t even have to duck, another annoying reminder of their height difference.

Suddenly, from the other side of the room, he heard the bubbly sound of his Unversed reappearing.

“Van!  I found them!”  Aqua called, but she didn’t summon her keyblade.

“Then what are you waiting for?”  He yelled while running towards her.  “Beat the food out of them!”

“But—” she glanced between him and the fluttering Prize Pods, “won’t that hurt you…?”

He shook his head in disgust.  “I’m going to hurt _you_ if I don’t get my ice cream.  Hurry up, before they decide to come back to me.”

He had to swat down one Prize Pod with his blade when it got too close.  The self-inflicted pain made him flinch, but several odd items littered the ground.  After watching him do it, Aqua must have been a little more confident in destroying the Unversed herself.  Quickly targeting all of the Prize Pods at once, she unleashed a rainbow shotlock that fired multiple energy bullets into each one.

It felt like someone had rained Ragnarok down on top of him.  He couldn’t help crying out as Hunger and Nostalgia and Pain all returned to him at once, sinking him to his knees.

“Nngh…”  He bit his tongue, keeping his cry to himself.  Now, if Aqua would just focus on picking up items, not turn around—

Of course, she did.  She even neglected the much more important ice cream ingredients in order to run to him.

“Van—!”

“Shut up,” he cut her off, struggling to stand by bracing himself with Void Gear.  “I’m _fine.”_

“No, you’re not!”  She finally snapped back at him.  “You keep wanting to hurt over and over again, like some crazy masochist—!”

“Shut up!”  He swung out and up with his keyblade, making her jump back.  “You think I _want_ this?  You think I make Unversed for fun and _like_ feeling them get blasted apart?”

He banished his keyblade, but stepped forwards to meet Aqua’s shamed gaze with a glare.  “I’m only doing it this time to get food.  I think that’s worth it.  So stop telling me what you think I want, because you have _no idea.”_

Spinning around without giving her a chance to reply, he scooped up the “Prickle Peppers” and “Gaspberries” and “Cream Fluffs” that had spilled from the Prize Pod he’d destroyed.  But he had to wonder, _was_ this worth it?  Creating and destroying the Unversed hurt worse than he remembered.  Come to think of it, though, he hadn’t made so many at once since being trapped in the Realm of Darkness… could his pain tolerance just be out of shape?

Once his arms were full of ingredients, he snuck a glance over his shoulder to where Aqua was collecting the rest.  Her back faced him, but he could tell her shoulders were slumped, her head low.  What, had he hurt her fragile feelings?  Or her pride, more likely.  _She wants to think she understands._ He snorted.  _Well she can’t.  I’ve been through more pain than she can imagine in her worst nightmares.  Who does she think she is, thinking she can take it away with the snap of her fingers?_

“Here,” Aqua said quietly, dumping out the rest of the ingredients she’d carried in her skirt.  Tiny vials of Rainbow Syrup and Soy Milk mingled with wrapped Cotton Cloudcandies and Fizzy Tizzies.

Vanitas stared at it all with a sense of pride mixed with disbelief.  “I made all of this…?”

“I suppose so.”  Aqua eyed their bounty dubiously.  “I can’t believe I’ve been eating items made out of your emotions.”

“At least you get to eat.  Now’s not the time to be picky.”

“Easy for you to say…”

He frowned.  “Look, I _did_ just go through a lot of pain for this,” he tugged at her guilt.  “Don’t make it go to waste.”

She stared down at the pile of Unversed-based food products, and she nudged a Dancin’ Lemon with the toe of her boot.  The lemon sparked momentarily, spasming angrily at the contact.

“This is crazy,” she mused to herself.  “I’m going to make ice cream out of monsters made out of emotions, with the person who used to want to kill me, under a pit of quicksand in the Realm of Darkness.”

Sheesh, was she just realizing this now?  She’d done half of those things already and apparently hadn’t given it a second thought.

He shrugged.  “Yeah.  So?”

She shook her head, sighing heavily.  “Never mind.  Do you want to try our hands at making that ice cream now?”

He grinned as he rubbed his hands together.  “Sheesh, I thought you’d never ask.”


	10. Ice Cream Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My mistake in the last chapter: the ice cream Van had when he was still with Ventus was sea-salt, not chocolate. That’s a little bit relevant.
> 
> Happy 10th chapter guys! :D (Lolsmallaccomplishments)

Now came the part Vanitas hadn’t really thought about:  how in the Worlds could they get ice cream out of a bunch of random food bits?

Aqua had recipes.  That wasn’t a problem.  From the ingredients they had, she said “Milky Way” would be the best flavor.  Vanitas separated out the required ten Cream Fluffs, eight Rainbow Syrups, and fourteen Cotton Cloudcandies, but they didn’t react or do anything special.  They just sat there on the sandy ground while Aqua magically stored away the remaining ingredients for later.

“This is stupid,” Vanitas muttered.  “Why isn’t it doing anything?”

Aqua frowned thoughtfully.  “They may be magical ingredients, but I suppose it won’t magically make itself.  But I don’t know exactly how the ducklings made it, either…”

“Perfect,” he grumbled.  “You don’t how to make ice cream.  Some help you are.”

She ignored his frustrated jab.  “Wait.  I used to make ice cream with Terra and Ven in the summer.  It wasn’t magical, but the process might be similar.”

“Why didn’t you say that in the first place?”  He asked grumpily, but mainly he was relieved that he might still get his food.  For once, he didn’t even make a spiteful comment towards Terra or Ventus.

“We mixed all of the ingredients in an ice cream maker we had,” she explained to him as she sat down cross-legged in front of their pile of ingredients.  “We filled the outside with ice and rock salt, which kept it cold while we turned the crank to churn it.”

That sounded simple enough.  They didn’t have an ice cream mixer, or ice, or “rock salt” (whatever that was), but it gave Vanitas an idea that might work even better.

Aqua jumped when Vanitas conjured a Blue Sea-Salt.  “What are you doing?”

“Chill out.  It doesn’t hurt.”  There was the usual twinge of discomfort, of course, but it was so faint and common that it wasn’t worth noticing.  He hadn’t gone _completely_ out of shape.

“Okay…” she said dubiously as the pot-shaped monster fluttered around his head.  “But what is it for?”

He smirked, grabbing the Unversed out of the air.  “Your new ice cream maker.”

She stared in disgust, but he’d expected that.  She never had been very nice to his fledgling emotions.  Rolling his eyes, he took off the Blue Sea-Salt’s bouncing lid and showed her the inside.

She flinched back at first, but curiosity must have won her over.  “Alright, the ice makes sense… but what’s the rest of it?  The white liquid?”

“Liquid?”  Vanitas hadn’t looked that closely before, assuming that it was just filled with Blizzard magic on the inside.  But to his surprise, Aqua was right.  He dipped a finger into the shallow layer of white liquid that coated the bottom.  After a sniff to determine if it was safe, he licked it.

His eyes widened in genuine surprise.  “It’s salty, but a little sweet!  Like the ice cream at the theme park back before—”

He quickly shut his mouth, wishing he’d had his mask on.  He _never_ talked about his past, _especially_ not when he was a part of Ventus.  Never.  So when Aqua opened her mouth to ask what he was talking about, he cut her off. 

“It’s not real ice cream.  Not complete, anyway,” he explained about the liquid inside.  “Maybe it’s the base ingredients, or something like that.  I bet we can make it work if we mix in what we’ve got.”

Even if it wasn’t fully-formed sea-salt ice cream, he still couldn’t believe even a tiny part of it somehow found its way into his Unversed.  Yes, he’d named it after the ice cream, but that was because of its color and cold magic.  Could his name have somehow influenced it in reverse…?

Aqua hesitantly sniffed the liquid inside the Blue Sea-Salt too.  “…Maybe you're right.  I guess it can’t be any more dangerous than the other ingredients.”

Finally, she had a little faith in him.  Took her long enough.

The Unversed wasn’t very compliant.  He had to hug it tight to his chest to keep it from bouncing around the air.  Meanwhile, Aqua poured in the glass vials of Rainbow Syrup.  The bottles vanished one by one as they were emptied.

“I can’t believe this is edible,” she said while shaking sand off of the wrappers of the Cotton Cloudcandies, which were basically giant rainbow-colored cotton balls.

“Yeah, you’ve said that about a hundred times now.”  Vanitas rolled his eyes.  “You’re the one who did it before, and it didn’t kill you.  Why does it bother you so much now?”

She thought about it as she unscrewed a squatty canister of Cream Fluff.  “I guess because we’re making it this time.”

He snorted.  The Unversed struggled harder against his grip in his annoyance.  “Really, Aqua, that’s getting old.  You couldn’t even have ice cream if it weren’t for me.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she clarified in exasperation.  “Huey made it for me before, so I didn’t see exactly how weird it was.”

“…Oh.”  He silently held the pot-creature while she dumped in the Cream Fluff, which seemed like a mix between whipped cream and mousse.

“Why do you keep thinking I’m being spiteful towards you?”  She had the guts to ask, looking him directly in the eyes.  Hers were even bluer than normal, filled with light that her suit couldn’t mask.  Thank the Void it seemed like no Heartless skulked around the underground.

He didn’t understand why her eyes seemed to search his for an answer when the question was so obvious.  So obvious, he couldn’t even infuse his answer with comfortable snark.

“Because you hate me,” he said simply.

She stopped dumping in the Cream Fluff.  He wished she would hurry up already; he didn’t like how much effort it took to restrain the Blue Sea-Salt.

She didn’t respond immediately.  Just sat there, frowning thoughtfully, no longer meeting his eyes.  Finally, she finished emptying the last few Cream Fluffs.  The last canister dissolved before she voiced her response.

“I suppose I should, shouldn’t I?”  She whispered.  “You fought against me and my friends.  You terrorized the Worlds with your Unversed.  You tried to start a Keyblade War to plunge the Worlds into darkness.”

He nodded.  All of this was true.  In a way, it was comforting that she was reminding him what he had done, who he was.  So why did she sound like there was a _‘but’_ about to follow it?

“A few good deeds shouldn’t make up for all of that.  I should still hate you.  I should… but I don’t think I do.”

The Blue Sea-Salt shuddered once, then for the first time, sat completely still.  It must have been as stunned as he was.

“Why not?”  He demanded, staring straight into her eyes, but still comprehending nothing.  Yeah, he’d gotten annoyed at her jabs towards him and his darkness before… but that was the way it was supposed to be.  She couldn’t just up and change the balance without his say-so.

“I’m starting to wonder if you were as much of a pawn in Xehanort’s plan as I was.  As we all were.”  She shook her head.  Subtly she brushed her fingertips across the glass star at her belt.

“What’s it matter?”  He stared her down.  She had to be playing some elaborate joke, just trying to confuse him.  Right?

“He used you, just like he used all of us.  Didn’t he?”  Aqua asked, but he shook his head.

“Of course he used me, but so what?  I still wanted to hurt you.  You should still hate me.”

She couldn’t seem to understand.  What didn’t she get?  She was light, he was darkness.  The End.  “Do you _want_ me to hate you?”

He shrugged, unsure of how to answer.  Was what he wanted supposed to matter here?  “Everyone hates me, Aqua.  That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

“But why?”  She pressed.  “Why shouldn’t I be able to forgive you?”

His head hurt.  Too many questions again.  Why did she always do this?  Make him question who he was?

“Because I haven’t changed.”  He avoided her gaze focusing on the Blue Sea-Salt’s lid, until she softly said his name and called his eyes back.

“…Vanitas.”  How could she say his name so tenderly?  It was a lie in itself.  “Do you still want to hurt me?”

It was just a yes-or-no question.  Simple.  Only questions about his feelings were never simple.

His first instinct was to snap “ _yes_ ,” because these questions were driving him crazy.  But now she’d made him curious; he thought harder.  Searched his darker impulses, the emotions just below the surface of his skin, itching to burst out as Unversed.  There was Annoyance, of course.  Frustration.  Confusion.  Hunger.  Longing.  Fear.  He closed his eyes, pulling them closer one by one, tying them to his heart so they couldn’t escape.

But the one emotion he was looking for didn’t surface, at least not in the way he expected.  Yes, Hate was still there, always burning, like a bonfire in a world without rain.  But it wasn’t directed at Aqua.  If anything, it was directed at the darkness, the Realm of Darkness.  This prison he’d been resurrected in.

_That’s stupid.  I_ am _darkness.  How can I hate the darkness?_ It didn’t make any sense, but it wasn’t part of her question, so he buried it deep inside again and hoped it wouldn’t try to fight its way out.

“…Not really,” he finally answered in a low mumble.

“You don’t want to hurt me?”  She asked for clarification.

“No.  I don’t,” he said in resignation.  Normally he fed off of contention, but after all that soul-searching, lying and arguing felt like too much effort.

A smile tugged at the corner of her lips.  “And do you hate me?”

He glared at her, but snapped out quickly, “No.  Now don’t make me change my mind.”

He’d honestly tried to hate her.  He’d _wanted_ to hate her.  But it was kind of hard to hate the only person he’d ever talked to who wasn’t a creepy, old, maniacal geezer.

Her twitching lips finally bloomed into a full grin.  “Then why should I hate you, Van?”

This time when the name caught him off guard, he realized why.  Other than the fact that it sounded like Ven, it was just too sweet.  A nickname she should give to a friend, not to a heart of darkness like him.  And it made him feel…

He clutched his head, groaning with the shock and confusion.  “Agh, what _is_ this…!?”

“What?”  She quickly summoned a potion.  “Are you alright?  What happened?”

“It’s this stupid _feeling…_ I hate it…”

But he didn’t hate it.  He just didn’t understand it.  It was like a duller version of what he felt when he joined with Ventus—“ _Light._ Agh, why do you have to be so _light…?”_

“I’m sorry,” she apologized instinctively, tentatively placing a hand on his shoulder.  “But I don’t understand; what did I do?”

The brief emotional spasm faded.  It seemed unreal somehow, like it had never been there at all.

In its place, there was emptiness – but not the kind he was used to.  A sort of pressure loosening from around his lungs, a weight lifting from his shoulders.

“You called me Van,” he explained, able to meet her eyes again.  “Why did you do that?”

The question seemed to catch her off guard.  “I-I don’t know.”  Her pale face flushed a light pink.

“You’re an awful liar, Aqua.  Tell me.”  Again he managed to take advantage of the new ability of eye contact.  She couldn’t hold his yellow gaze without telling the truth.

“…It sounds nicer, alright?”  She admitted without looking him in the eye.  “It’s strange.  When I call you Van, I don’t think of you the same way.  You say you haven’t changed, but you’re not the same person who hurt me and Terra and Ven.  Vanitas would hate me, but you don’t.”  She met his eyes again.  “That’s why I would rather call you Van.”

Names were important.  Vanitas had learned that much from Xehanort.  His own name meant “emptiness,” a fitting enough name for a heart that had been void of positive emotions since his creation… until now.  This strange warmth, the warmth triggered by the name “Van”…  He searched his memory for the feeling – searched Ventus’s memory, the only place he might find it.

“Do you… _care_ about me?”  He asked incredulously.  Cared for.  That was the feeling she kept giving him, the one that had terrified him, that confused him, that now made him feel… safe, somehow.  He didn’t understand it, but for once, he didn’t fight it.

Aqua’s smile faltered.  “Of course I do.  That’s why I wanted to help you.”

It was so opposite to how she’d treated him mere days ago.  Had saving her life changed her mind that much?

“Why do you care?”  He asked the same question he had before, still a few steps away from being convinced.

Her hand instinctively closed around her star-shaped charm.  “Because we’re in this together, Van.  If I’ve realized anything these past few days, it’s that you were right.  We can’t do this alone.”

He blinked in surprise.  “You’re… admitting I’m right?”

Her laugh mingled with a sigh as she nodded.  “I suppose I am.”

He tried to process, take in everything that had happened.  She didn’t hate him.  In fact, she _cared_ about him.  Even admitted she needed him. 

_And you think eating Unversed ice cream is the most insane thing you’ve done?_

But she wasn’t lying.  Her light was too strong for that, her smile too relaxed.  He was out of arguments.

“Then… I guess I’ll take your word for it.”  His smile was more of a crooked smirk, but it felt more comfortable than his signature scowl.

She shook her head, but the smile stayed on her face.  “It took you long enough.  It’s like you’ve never--” She stopped abruptly.

“Never what?”  He raised an eyebrow.

“…Like you don’t know how to accept kindness,” she finished sheepishly.  “I’m sorry.  That was insensitive.”

He shrugged.  “You’re right.  You’re the first one to show it to me.”

Apparently that didn’t cheer her up much.  But this victory – he chose to consider it a victory— felt good.  He felt truly _good,_ for the first time in literally forever.  He wasn’t about to let her drag him back down.

“Forget about it,” he told her. “Our ice cream’s going to melt.”

She jumped a little when the Blue Sea-Salt fluttered back to life in his arms, like she’d forgotten it was there.  It still seemed sluggish, but that would hopefully make his job easier.

“So we need to mix it, right?”  He asked, holding down the pot creature’s lid.

“Yes, but we don’t have a crank or a spoon—”

He laughed.  “Pfft, who needs those?”

Vanitas jumped to his feet, made sure he had a firm grip on the pot’s bottom and lid, and started shaking.  Aqua gave him a funny look, covering her mouth to hide her laugh.

“…Well, I suppose that’s one way to do it.”

“It’s the _best_ way,” he bragged with a smirk, still shaking the Unversed like a giant maraca. “You want to give it a shot?”

She laughed again, probably at how ridiculous he looked.  Whatever; he honestly didn’t care.  “Sure, why not shake a monster of negative emotions to make ice cream?”

Maybe that was supposed to be sarcasm, but he carefully passed her the Unversed anyway.  After making awkward eye contact with the Blue Sea-Salt, she shook it even faster, like she was trying to show him up.  Or maybe just trying to get it over with as quickly as possible.

“This is so weird,” she said, “but it’s kind of fun.”

“Fun?”  He blinked.  “Is this what fun feels like?”  He’d buried the memory long ago with most of Ventus’s other positive feelings.

She frowned, confused.  “How do I explain what—?”

She shouted in surprise when in her moment of distraction, the blue Unversed flung out of her hands.  Dizzy and sluggish, it bounced on the ground before fluttering back to the air, bumping its face against a wall, and finally fleeing down a branching tunnel.

“Hey!  Get back here, idiot!”  Vanitas ordered, but he might as well have said nothing at all.

“I don’t think it’s going to listen,” Aqua called over her shoulder as she chased after the Unversed.

“Ugh, this again?”  Vanitas followed after her, hoping the stupid creature wouldn’t spill his ice cream.  What was with his Unversed suddenly getting a rebellious streak?  The Prize Pods he could understand, but the Blue Sea-Salts were usually relatively obedient…

“Déjà vu?”  Aqua asked with a light laugh when Vanitas caught up to her.

 “Tch.  No kidding.”  At least the pot hadn’t had as much of a head start this time; he could see it bouncing frantically up ahead until it rounded a corner.

Suddenly Aqua shot him an unexpected grin.  “Whoever catches the Unversed gets first ice cream!”

“What?”  His surprise gave her time to race past him.  What had gotten into her?

Whatever it was, he couldn’t back down from a challenge.  His feet pounded the sand-dusted ground; his long strides propelled him forwards.  In his intense determination, he quickly blew past her.

She didn’t seem mad, though.  She just laughed and chased after him.  If it were a real challenge, wouldn’t she take it more seriously?  It was like she was letting him win.

“Having fun yet, Van?”  She asked when she caught up again.

The Blue Sea-Salt was nearly within reach; he didn’t have time to think about ‘fun.’ Shoving past her, he reached out and tackled the Unversed to the ground.

“Hah, I won!”  He declared proudly, regardless of the fact that he lay panting on the ground, his hair matted with sand.

“…Yes, you did.”  Aqua rolled her eyes.  What, did he do something wrong?  She shook her head as she brushed herself off.  “But did you have any fun?”

“…I won,” he repeated, confused by the stupid question.

Surprisingly, even though she was the loser, she looked at _him_ with sympathy.  “Have you ever played a game before, Vanitas?”

He bristled at how she said his name, but it brought back the memories she was asking for.  “What do you think I was doing with you and the two idiots before we got stuck here?”

Aqua looked like she wanted to angrily retort, but she let it go.  “I meant a real game, for fun.  Not manipulating people.”

What in the Worlds was she talking about?  Manipulating the three of them was the most fun he’d ever had. …But when he’d finally succeeded in bringing out her darkness, it had stopped being fun very fast.  _Ugh, why is this all so complicated?   I miss when I could just stab all my problems in the face._

“…What _is_ fun?”  He finally asked, sitting up with the pot hugged to his chest again.

The tunnel narrowed here, so Aqua sat beside rather than across from him.  “I don’t know if I can explain that.  That’s why I tried to have a race, to show you something that can be fun.  I didn’t expect you to take it so seriously.”  She rubbed her arm, wincing a little.  He vaguely recalled shoving her as he ran past; had he actually hurt her?  _Sheesh, suck it up already.  I know you’re not that easy to break._

“Why _didn’t_ you take it seriously?”  He asked in reply.

“Because it’s just for fun.  When we lived in the Land of Departure, Terra and I would race each other all the time, just for the fun of it.”  She smiled nostalgically, but it quickly turned into a thoughtful frown.  “Come to think of it, when we were younger he used to take it too seriously too.  Maybe it’s a boy thing…”

Vanitas gagged.  “You’re comparing me to _Terra_ now?”  His irritation and disgust made the pot Unversed shudder with sudden energy.  “Ventus is one thing, but if you start comparing me to that other idiot, I’ll have to take a keyblade to your face.”

“Terra’s my best friend,” she defended, obviously not taking his threat seriously.  “To compare you to him is an honor.”

Vanitas blinked.  He was about to snap back another insult, but he was too stunned.  An _honor?_ What was wrong with her, showing him “honor”?  He didn’t deserve her honor, didn’t want it anyway – but he hadn’t deserved kindness, either, and it had been given freely.  Well, more like shoved in his face whether he wanted it or not.

…There was something special about Aqua.  Whether it was a good special or a mentally disturbed special, he was still trying to figure out.

“Whatever,” he muttered, deciding to just diffuse the conversation.  He had more important things to worry about.  “I still get first ice cream.”

He opened the Blue Sea-Salt’s lid, and a wide grin spread across his face.  Miraculously, the Unversed hadn’t spilled his dessert in its flight.  A fluffy, rainbow-colored ice cream filled the pot to the very top.

It brought a smile to Aqua’s face, too.  “It turned out pretty nice, didn’t it?  It’s too bad we don’t have the garnishes the ducklings used…”

“Pfft, who cares?  We just made _ice cream_ out of _nothing!”_ He let out a gleeful cackle, scooping the dessert out with his fingers.

Aqua looked appalled.  “Van, you can’t eat it like that—!”

He shoved the ice cream into his mouth.

“ _Ahh,”_ he sighed in pure bliss.  The sugar danced on his taste buds; the soft, wispy texture dissolved as he swallowed. He had never eaten anything similar enough to identify the flavor.  The only comparison he could think of was a sweet, sweet dream.  Not that he’d ever had any pleasant dreams, but Ventus must have.

He was rudely awakened when Aqua yanked the Blue Sea-Salt out of his arms.

“Hey!”He leapt to his feet, keyblade milliseconds from materializing.

“You can’t just dig your hands in it!  That’s _disgusting_!”  She must think he was raised by wild animals.  He was raised by Xehanort, so that was close enough.

“What?”  He gaped down at her.  “How do you expect me to eat it!?”

“With a—” Aqua frowned thoughtfully.  “Oh.  We don’t have spoons, do we.”

Vanitas snorted, rolling his eyes.  “Obviously.”  Unless she still had some secret storage place she wasn’t telling him about.

“Well… let’s at least wash our hands first.”

As much as he still hungered for ice cream, he impatiently let her spray his hands water magic and sloppily scrubbed with soap bubbles she conjured. 

“There, happy?”  He flicked off bubbles at her.  _Leave it to Aqua to learn magic to wash your hands,_ he snorted.

“I just don’t want us to catch a disease.”  She lathered her own hands, then awkwardly sprayed each one off with the other.  “I can’t imagine what kinds of bacteria this place could be harboring.”

Vanitas shook off his hands, then wiped them on his not-skirt-thing.  “Nothing I can’t handle.”

He’d never been sick before.  Not from germs, anyway.  In his early days of creating Unversed, the emotional toll often spread to his physical body.  After training exercises when Xehanort had pushed him too far, made him create too many Unversed, he would slink off to the dark corridors and retch until he was completely empty.  The darkness within the corridors filled him again as he had laid there, spasms wracking his body, until he could finally drift into fevered dreams…

A few germs had nothing on that.

“Well, I’d rather play it safe.”  Aqua warily eyed the Blue Sea-Salt, which was now fluttering fairly calmly, waiting for them to eat the ice cream inside.

_Oh,_ now _you get ahold of yourself,_ Vanitas thought towards his Unversed.  _Sheesh, you’re almost as bipolar as me._

“Whatever.”  He pulled the Blue Sea-Salt back and set it in his lap, where both he and Aqua could reach it.  He was perfectly happy to dig his hands in and start stuffing his face again, but she still looked slightly queasy.

“This is still so…”

“Quit complaining,” Vanitas snapped after swallowing a handful.  “Eat it or don’t.  If you’re too picky, that’s just more for me.”

Her desire for food may not have been as strong as his, but it finally won out over her suspicion.  He paused to let her scoop a tiny bit out, watching for her reaction.

She hesitantly stuck out her tongue and licked it, eyes widening in surprise.  “It tastes exactly like the Milky Way Huey made for me.”  She sucked the rest off of her hand.  “Better, actually.”

“Told you we could do it.”  Vanitas smirked, practically glowing with pride from his success and the indirect compliment.  Actually, he was literally glowing; the ice cream had triggered the Skyclimber command style.  “And I’m the best.  What did you expect?”

She shook her head, but her laugh undermined it.  “Maybe I should wait to see if we get sick later before passing judgement.”  Regardless of that possibility, she scooped out a full handful this time.

They had to look like savages, sitting in the middle of a sandy tunnel, plunging their hands into a monster of negativity, stuffing their faces with its cold, creamy insides.  It was no wonder Aqua had been reluctant at first.  Vanitas grinned as she now licked her fingers, enjoying the ice cream almost as much as he was.

He laughed – not cackled, not snickered, but actually laughed.

“This is fun.”  He decided it for himself, without needing Aqua to tell him.  He wasn’t hurting – no, it was better than just an absence of pain.  He felt good.

He felt _happy._

Recognizing the positive emotion jolted him.  Aqua’s eyes softened in concerned curiosity, but he just grinned and went back to eating.

He hadn’t known he _could_ feel happy.  His only memory of the emotion came from Ventus, usually a constant teaser of what he could never have – only now he could.  An icy shard of envy melted inside him.

_Take that, Ventus.  I_ am _just as good as you._ Better _than you.  I bet you take being happy for granted, you idiot._ Vanitas wouldn’t make that mistake.  He would savor every happy, delicious second.

Slowly their fingers began to scrape the insides of the pot.  The Milky Way ice cream depleted handful by handful.  Soon, too soon, only a crust of ice remained.

Vanitas actually wanted to cry.  It was over.  His brief respite from reality was gone – except…

…He still felt good.  Not full; it was like the ice cream had passed straight through him.  Maybe dissolved back to the emotions it came from.  But it didn’t matter.  Somehow, he was still happy.

Aqua finished licking her fingers clean and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand.  “Mmm.  That was the best thing I’ve eaten in…”

“However long you’ve been stuck here?”  Vanitas guessed as the purple command style glow faded from around them.

She nodded, eyes clouded with her thoughts.  “I wonder how long it’s been now…”

“Why does it matter?”  He asked while draining the Blue Sea-Salt’s negativity back into himself.  Even that discomfort barely made his good mood flicker.  “There’s no way to keep track of time down here.”

“I’m sure it’s possible,” she said, tapping her fingers on her leg.  “We may not know how long we’ve spent so far, but we can always start now.”

He snorted.  “Isn’t it a little late for that?” He still didn’t see why it mattered.  Whether a hundred seconds or a hundred years passed in the other Realm, he didn’t have anyone there waiting for him.  And for all they knew, Aqua didn’t either. 

“It’s never too late.”  She smiled, standing up.

“That still doesn’t explain how you’ll do it,” he pointed out, standing and wiping ice cream dribbles off of his chin and chest.

“It may not be one hundred percent accurate, but I’ll count each time we sleep as one day,” she explained with a knowing smile.  “And I’ll start with the day Van became my friend.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t you guys get too excited. This chapter got ridiculously long, so this was the best place I could find to split it. There’s plenty more interesting (and potentially frustrating) stuff yet to come.
> 
> Review reply to dmcfanboy: yes, in this universe Vanitas has some light in his heart. When he was created he was purely darkness, but to be a functioning human being (who isn’t a princess of heart), my theory is that you have to have at least a little bit of both darkness and light. For example, Ven was practically a zombie when he was first split and was only light, but I think he had to develop a little of his own darkness, because otherwise he wouldn’t be able to feel any negative emotions, ex. betrayal towards Terra and Aqua for leaving him behind. Similarly, as Vanitas gained Sora’s face and turned more human instead of a faceless monster, I think he had to have a tiny bit of light, but it would have been twisted and very repressed by Xehanort. Plus since he was constantly spawning Unversed, he was constantly exercising his darkness. Ironically, in the Realm of Darkness he hasn’t had to do that as much, and through having semi-decent human interaction with Aqua, he has more light than he ever has before. That’s still not a lot of light, but enough to make him less dark than the darkest Heartless demon spawn, basically. …Wow that was probably a lot more explanation than was necessary. Also in my headcanon the Prize Pods were always the most painful and difficult to create, which is why they only respawn after you’ve left the world in BbS. The concept that the Unversed being destroyed causes Vanitas pain actually comes from the novels, I read about it on the KHwiki and I think it’s a really neat idea to play with, especially when writing sympathetic Vani. I think that’s all I can say without giving out spoilers. :P


	11. Schism

_“And I’ll start with the day Van became my friend.”_

How could one sentence provoke so many emotions?  Shock.  Confusion.  Disbelief.  Disgust.  Hope.  Longing.

In his conflicted state, some of the fledgling emotions burst from his back – Floods, Scrappers, Hareraisers, Mandrakes.  They scampered a few feet down the tunnel before suddenly stopping and turning on each other.  A brawl broke out, Unversed versus Unversed.

“Stop it!”  Vanitas shouted at them, yelping at the unexpected pain of his creations clawing, scraping, and whacking at each other.

He summoned his keyblade to destroy the idiotic creatures.  Seeing the pain they caused him, Aqua quickly joined in, striking down the Unversed until only health orbs, munny, and d-link shards remained.

Aqua’s eyes were wide.  Whether it was from concern or fear, Vanitas couldn’t tell.

“What… what happened?”

He still trembled from the shock of those conflicting emotions forcing themselves back into him.  “…I don’t know.”

Honestly, nothing quite like that had ever happened before.  It terrified him.  That terror wanted to manifest as a Bruiser, but he barely kept it contained.  The chain reaction of the Unversed life cycle may have been useful when he had several worlds to flood with them, but right now it would only keep him trapped in pain.  He crushed an HP orb under his boot, trying to let its replenishing energy soothe him.

_What the heck is wrong with me?_ He stared at his palms, as if more Unversed would peel out when he wasn’t looking.  _Did I get sick?  I swear, I’ll never underestimate germs again…_

“Was it… what I said?”  Aqua timidly asked, keeping her distance from him.

He had to pull his mind back together.  What had she said…?

Oh.  Right.

“No, Aqua—” He shook his head.  But she was right; the offer of friendship, combined with the kind name, must have caused his emotional schism.  Now that she said it, he knew it couldn’t be anything else.

“It’s okay,” she said quietly, turning her gaze away.  “If you don’t want to be my friend, I understand.  I only thought, well, the two of us are the only ones here, and you were starting to open up… I thought you might want… to not feel alone anymore.”

He clenched his eyes shut, focusing all his energy on keeping his Unversed below the surface.

“Shut up, Aqua,” he murmured, but there was no energy in it.

“I’m sorry—”  She was cut off with a sharp glare.

“What part of _shut up_ don’t you understand?”

The good feeling was gone.  He’d managed to push down all emotion, make himself numb.  Only… he was still sad.  Guilty.  Because now Aqua had a thin, glistening tear line down her cheek.

“Gah, why do you have to be so nice?”  He wanted to turn his back to her, but it was like he was stuck.  Besides, if any more Unversed spontaneously sprang from his back, he’d rather them not have a straight shot at her throat.

“…I don’t understand,” she said honestly.

“Neither do I, Aqua.  That’s the problem.”  He shook his head, wishing he could shake the pain off with it.

“Can you not just… tell me what you feel?”

Her sincere question prompted a hollow laugh.  “You say that like I _know_ what I feel.”

She took a half-step towards him.  “That’s why you talk about it.  To help you work through your feelings outside of your own mind.  Trust me, it can help.”

He snorted in scorn.  The _last_ thing he wanted to do was face his emotions.  They were much safer buried deep inside, where they wouldn’t manifest at a moment’s notice.

But how long could he really hold them down?  Even now he felt them rearing their ugly heads:  Terror, Confusion, Anger, Hopelessness.  But it wasn’t hopeless, not if Aqua was right.  Expelling the emotions through words… could it really be a way to rid himself of the bipolar Unversed?

Well, he didn’t have much to lose – except Aqua.  He guessed… it could be a sort of test.  Yes, a test.  If she still thought she could handle him after figuring out what the heck was wrong with him, then he would trust her.  He could kill two birds with one stone.

“Fine.”  He sat with his back to the wall, the safest position he could think of.  Should he summon his helmet for this?  Nah, hiding his face from Aqua would only make her ask more questions.

“Really?”  She asked in surprise as she sat next to him.

“Shut up before I change my mind.”  He cleared his throat, ready to speak… only he had no idea what to say.  How could he explain all of the emotions battling inside of him?  The miniature civil war between his Unversed seemed like explanation enough.

But they both knew about the schism.  _What she wants to know is_ why _.  The same thing I want_. 

“I… feel… confused.”  His voice cracked while only admitting that much.  When his eyes flickered to her blue ones, she nodded for him to continue.  He clenched his hands around the folds of his not-skirt-thing.  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.  I don’t know what I’m feeling.  I don’t know…” 

He paused, wanting to retreat again, but she was still listening.  Not analyzing, not judging.  Just listening.  He’d never had anyone pay him this much attention before, outside of combat, anyway. He expected it to feel unnerving, but somehow it comforted him.

“I don’t know who I am anymore.”  When he shook his head, grains of sand scattered out of his hair onto the ground.  “You can’t understand, Aqua.  I’ve always been a heart of pure darkness; it’s how I was created.  Then here _you_ come along, spewing your stupid light everywhere and somehow making me want to save you and telling me I could be _good--_ and the stupidest part is I might actually be falling for it.”

He bit the top of his knuckle; had he really just admitted that?  It had been like opening a floodgate; once he started talking, he just couldn’t shut up.  Rather than give Aqua a moment to comment on his mental state, he continued rambling.

“Being good is for idiots.  That’s what Xehanort always told me, but he was an idiot too, so it shouldn’t matter what he said.  I’m guess I’m just scared.  I don’t know how to be good, and I never needed to.  And I don’t want to… but _gah,_ why does it hurt when you are?  It would be so much easier if you were just a jerk like me…”

He stopped to catch his breath, but couldn’t bring himself to look at Aqua.  The sand draining along the ground suddenly became very interesting.

“You feel… guilty?”  She softly asked.  He wished he could lie.  What was it about her tiny questions that seemed to cut him wide open?

“Sure.  I’ll take your word for it.”  He snorted, trying to keep his cool.  “I shouldn’t feel guilty.  A heart of pure darkness wouldn’t.  So I know either something’s wrong with me, or…”  He swallowed the dryness in his throat.  Of all the things he needed to say, this was the hardest.  It meant defying everything he ever was.  Yet somehow, there was another feeling inside him—one that said it meant _accepting_ who he was.

“…or you were right.  And there is light in me.”  He clutched the fabric of his suit, the black heart in the center of his chest.  He wanted to throw up.  _Ha, there’s no mask stopping me now.._.

“…Would that really be so bad?”  Aqua asked, shifting a fraction closer to him.

He remembered something that might make her understand.  “You know how you felt when you realized you have darkness inside of you?”

She shuddered; he caught it from the corner of his eye.  “Of course.  I was disgusted; it was like I betrayed myself.  Like this place had finally won its war against me.”

Relief dissolved a bit of the tension in his stomach.  “That’s exactly how I feel.  Only instead of losing to the Realm of Darkness, I’m losing to you.”

He finally risked a clear look at her.  There was still a glaze of confusion over her eyes, but it was laced with comprehension.

“That can’t be right.”  She pulled her legs to her chest.  “Light doesn’t hurt the way darkness does.”

Vanitas had to shake his head.  She was too naïve for her own good.  “It does when you’ve never felt it.  When you’ve been trained your whole life to reject it.”

Her mouth parted, releasing a soft sound of sympathy.  “That’s terrible…”

“You would know,” he couldn’t help pointing out.  “Didn’t your master do the same thing to you?”

The sudden turn caught her off guard.  “What do you mean, the Master—?”  But his meaning quickly dawned on her; she shook her head frantically.  “No way.  There’s a reason we reject the darkness; it’s dangerous.  I mean, look what it’s done to you.”

The comment stung, like acupuncture on his heart.  Normally he would’ve snarked back to distract himself from it, to make her hurt the same way – but instead, he finally thought about _why_ it hurt.

Because it was true.  Because he was the one breaking down, his own emotions turning on him.  Because he was the one who had never been happy until today, when he’d eaten half a pot of ice cream.

Pathetic.  He was absolutely _pathetic_.

“…I just want to be happy again,” he whispered, sounding as broken as he felt.  His darkness screamed, wanting to lash out at himself for admitting his weakness.  But did it matter?  It was done.  What could Aqua do to him that was worse than making him spill his guts like this?  “Is that too much to ask?”

A tear dripped down the curve of her cheek. “No, Van.  That’s not too much to ask.”

“Then tell me, Aqua.”  His gold eyes begged shamelessly.  “Tell me how I can be happy.”

Her blue eyes were wider than he’d ever seen them.  She’d done it; she’d broken down the walls around his heart, and now she was going to drown in the Flood.  It had been inevitable, hadn’t it?  After all, that was the reason behind his first Unversed’s name.

“…What does your heart tell you?”  She answered his question with another question.  A stupid question.  His desperation snapped to anger.

“How should I know!?”  He ran his hands through his hair, wanting to yank out black fistfuls.  “My heart doesn’t know how to be happy!  Maybe I’m not all dark, but I’m not like _you,_ Aqua!”

What made her think this would help?  He couldn’t handle this level of honesty.  He couldn’t handle these emotions—

A swarm of Floods wisped from tendrils of darkness, snaking out from his back, around his arms, over his head.

“Van!”  Locking her eyes on his, Aqua clasped her hands onto his shoulders.  Even when the Floods lashed at her arms, she didn’t let go.  Didn’t even flinch.  “I might not know a lot, but I know you’re hurting.  You can’t let that pain control you!”

The Floods were his most basic, animalistic desires; they wanted nothing more than to rip her apart.  Eliminate the source of the pain, the thing that confused him, that split him in two.  He hissed with the effort of restraining them.

“You’re more than your emotions!”  She insisted, her blue eyes never leaving his.  He fought to keep them in his sight, to not let his eyelids close and force him into darkness.

_Give up already,_ a voice in his head whispered.  _This is who you are.  This is what you were created to do._

“Nnngh— _shut up_!”  He ordered the voice, making Aqua flinch.  A Flood’s arm left a diagonal cut down her cheek, but she still held on.

“Not until I can find a way to save you!” she retorted.

“Not talking to you!”  Vanitas snapped back with a grimace, Floods half-formed from his flesh.  “Nngh—I can’t control them much longer—”

“Come on!  Look at me, Van!”  She shook him, trying to keep his focus on her.  “I thought you were stronger than that!” 

He wasn’t strong.  He wasn’t even strong enough to control his own creations.  But Aqua believed in him, even when she shouldn’t.  Why?  Why was she still trying, even as the Unversed raged against her?

_“And I’ll start with the day Van became my friend.”_

She had risked her life for Ventus.  She had risked her life for Terra.  And now, she was risking her life for him.

“You’re right.”  Vanitas could see his eyes, burning bright gold, reflected in hers.  “I’m stronger than a few feelings…”

Deep breaths became his only thought.  Deep breaths, and the deep blue of her eyes.  It was an anchor point, a distraction that helped him force the Floods to retreat.

“Good,” she spoke soothingly.  “Good.  You’re doing great, Van.”

Slowly but surely, the Floods dissolved.  Vanitas was left gasping, clutching his chest, but otherwise intact.

Aqua smiled, probably in relief.  “There we go.  You’re alright.  Right?”

“…Yeah.”  He exhaled heavily, trying not to let the bile rise in the back of his throat.  “Yeah…. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”  She finally removed her hands from his shoulders.  He was afraid the Unversed would spring back in the absence, but surprisingly, he felt alright.  Maybe there was some merit to the “talking it out” idea.  …Or maybe he was just extremely bipolar.  That would make about as much sense.

She was still staring at him, probably wondering if he would have another mental/emotional breakdown  Well, if he was, he wasn’t about to sit around and wait for it to happen.

“…Happy day one,” he quickly murmured before summoning his mask to shield his face.

“Happy day one—?”

He took off, stumble-running down the tunnel until he came to a hollow in the wall that he could squeeze himself into.  Aqua was calling his name, but he’d handled all the interaction he could for one day.  He needed time for it to sink in.

_Day one._ He sunk deeper into the sand-washed wall, his eyelids slipping shut.  _Congratulations, Aqua. You passed the test. Hope you don’t regret it._

He’d summoned his mask so she wouldn’t see him cry.  He’d been sure that as soon as he was alone, at least some of the feelings would return.  But surprisingly, his eyes stayed completely dry.  He was… content.  Or worn out.  Something like that.

_So now I’m Aqua’s friend… does that automatically go both ways?  Does she have to be my friend too?_

Well, if he had to have a friend, he guessed there were worse options.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter that I’ve already had drafted, so I’ll likely finish up WPFF before I update this more.


	12. Voice

Aqua was smart enough not to bring up Vanitas’s emotional breakdown the next “morning.”  If he had been the thanking type, he would’ve thanked her for that.  Instead, he pried himself from his sandy crevice, brushed himself off, and got to work on reading the darkness’ scent.

It was difficult to focus with Aqua’s blue gaze fixed on him, watching silently as she sat cross-legged on the ground, running her thumb over that ridiculous star-shaped charm.

“Cut that out,” he ordered , turning his back to her.  “Your stupid charm’s messing with my nose.”

She remained silent, but he could tell from the dissipating smell that she’d stopped touching it.  The thought crossed his mind that a good friend would’ve asked her more nicely.  Too bad he wasn’t a good friend.

“There we go.”  He closed his eyes, taking a deep whiff.  He hadn’t yet removed his mask, so his sense of smell was a little dimmed, but he wasn’t ready to face her eye-to-eye yet.  Besides, his nose was more than powerful enough to make up for the plastic barrier.

…Or at least, it usually was.  So why couldn’t he smell which way to go?

Grumbling, he threw off his mask, but it didn’t seem to help.  The tunnel smelled equally dark in both directions.

“Is something wrong?”  Aqua asked, the first words she’d said so far today other than an awkward “good morning.”

“Of course not,” he covered quickly, scooping up his helmet but vanishing it rather than putting it back on.  “Come on.  We’re going this way.”

The tunnel only stretched in two directions, so he chose the way they hadn’t come from.  Still, it bothered him that he had no way to know for sure If it was the way out.  They’d gotten so turned around chasing after the Unversed yesterday, they could be anywhere under the Realm of Darkness by now.

As usual, the silence irritated Vanitas as they walked.  He’d expected, if they really _were_ friends, that she would have more to say to him.  Of course, she probably couldn’t think of anything to talk about besides his Unversed going insane, and he was perfectly fine with not mentioning that.

“Look.” Aqua pointed to the wall, which was fading from sandy tan to a cold, solid grey.  “Do you think we’re almost out?”

Vanitas just shrugged.  The darkness didn’t smell any softer, but he’d let her have her futile hope.

That hope didn’t last as the tunnel wound deeper, the grey darkened to pitch black, and the walls’ ambient glow faded like the last rays of a sunset.  Aqua lit a hovering ball of Fira – though it would take less effort, neither of them wanted to risk Vanitas summoning a Red Hot Chili.

“…Are you sure this is the way out?”  Aqua asked, taking slow, careful steps in the firelight.

Vanitas rolled his eyes, saying sarcastically, “No, I just thought we should wander around in the dark for fun.”

“There’s something weird, though.”  The flickering light danced across her frown.  “If it’s so dark down here, where are all the Heartless?”

He hadn’t thought about that, but it _was_ weird.  They hadn’t even appeared when she’d played with her star-shaped charm.

“Maybe even they can’t stand it down here.”  He clenched and unclenched his fists, trying to shake the feeling that the walls were narrowing.  It was probably just the firelight, reflecting at weird angles as the walls grew glossier…

But it wasn’t an illusion.  Gradually, over the course of what must have been hours, the tunnel walls funneled until he was practically pressed against Aqua’s side, the ball of Fira illuminating their endless reflections in the glassy black walls, like a nightmarish house of mirrors.

“I don’t like this at all,” Aqua whispered, shivering.

“Join the club.”  Vanitas shuddered.

“…Should we go back?”  She asked reluctantly.  For once, he wasn’t angry that she doubted him.  This tunnel even gave _him_ the creeps.  But at the same time, that would be a long, long walk back…

“Back where?”  He countered.  “If it’s a dead end or we can’t fit, we’ll go back.  But we’ll never get anywhere if we keep picking paths and giving up on them.”

“What about your nose?”  She asked, stopping.  He stopped too before he could walk straight into the Fira.  “Is this _really_ taking us towards the light?”

“Of c…”  His answer choked off.  It was easy enough to brush her questions off with sarcasm, but this time her blue gaze caught him cold.  Like a lie detector test he hadn’t yet been able to cheat.  His sigh was laced with irritation, but his hatred of showing weakness was finally overpowered by the eeriness of the reflective tunnel.  “What do you want me to say, Aqua?  I don’t know, okay!  I don’t freaking know!”

She looked like she wanted to flinch away, but there wasn’t enough room.  Her back flattened against the glossy stone wall as it was.  At first he thought an Unversed might be trying to escape – but no, Anger was an emotion that might burst out of his mouth, but not as much his body, not unless he wanted it to.  At least he was safe there.  No, she was just afraid of him.  Like she should be.

“Look, I may be pretty awesome, but I’m not perfect,” he admitted, backing up as far as he could in the narrow space.  “My sense of smell… this place is interfering with it.  _Everywhere_ is dark.”

“So…”  She stared steadfastly at the ground, “we could be anywhere.”

His stomach sank, a feeling worse than hunger.  “…Yeah.  We could.”

Absently her fingers brushed over the charm at her hip, but this time, it didn’t glow.  “Maybe I’d rather you stayed painfully arrogant.”

“Why? Can’t handle the truth?”  He snored.  Considering how she always questioned him, he never thought that she might actually… trust him, in a way.  Depend on his confidence.

She shook her head.  “It just doesn’t leave us with any plan of action.  Stay this course, return back… either way, we have no compass.”

Her doubt hurt – true as it was, Vanitas didn’t like hearing her say it out loud. “Then it doesn’t matter,” he decided, turning away from the fire.  “But we have to keep moving.  We can’t stay and rot down—”

Wind.  Whooshing towards them, from the direction they’d been travelling.  It carried the warm stench of decay; regardless of the previously overpowering darkness, he could plainly identify the disgusting smells of moldy sewers, rusted drains, and all other places darkness fed to.  He gagged on it, choked on it; the tunnel was too narrow to escape.

“Vanitas!”  Aqua caught him as he swayed, collapsed.  “Van, what is it?  What was that?”

“Nngh… Get out… we’ve got to get… air…”

As easily as if he were a bag of feathers, she scooped him up in both arms and ran as fast as her legs could carry them.  Vanitas hovered at the edge of consciousness, but he couldn’t form a coherent thought other than to despise the smell.  This wasn’t ordinary darkness, not even for its Realm.  This was something much, much worse, and he did _not_ want to find out what.

_“Ohhh…”_ The wind bristled the back of his neck, moaned in his ear, rotted his nose.  Aqua froze.

“What?”  Vanitas mustered the strength to snap.  “Run, you idiot…”

_“Ohh…_ thisss…”

That – _that_ was not wind.

“You heard that,” Aqua whispered breathlessly.  “Didn’t you?”

_“Yessss,”_ the not-wind hissed.  Aqua’s grip had tightened on him, so even if the voice hadn’t chilled his blood, he wouldn’t have been able to move.

“Run,” Vanitas whispered, eyes wide open.  “Aqua, run!”

Stumbling, her legs worked themselves into motion.  Not fast enough.

_“Sssssuch a hurry,”_ the voice tingled.  A low, light breath of a sound, a breath warm and sticky, like blood.  Aqua lurched to another halt in spite of Vanitas’s hissing protests.  _The firssst denziensss of light in over a thoussssand yearsss.  Sssurely you could sssstay for a ssshort visssit.”_

Vanitas put his arms around Aqua’s neck, clutching her tightly as she clung to him.  He didn’t even spare a thought for how he looked as pathetic as damsel in distress.

“What... what in light’s name _was_ that?”  Aqua’s words were barely audible against her ear.

“I don’t know.  I don’t want to know, I want you to freaking _RUN!”_

“Easy for you to say!”  She snapped, legs moving as if through molasses.

Another gust of the hellish wind, and the Fira blew out.  The last sound Vanitas expected burst from Aqua’s mouth – a terrified, girlish squeal.

_“Isssn’t thisss much better?”_ The wind wrapped around them in a chocking embrace, but the voice itself was gentle, dangerously entrancing.  Like honey swarming with demonic bees.

Aqua was breathing hard; Vanitas could feel himself rising and falling with it.  In spite of the terror squeezing a fist around his heart, he made himself scramble out of her arms.  Too dark; his head hit the wall with a _thud._ Snapping a curse, he found his footing and lit a dim ball of Dark Firaga, barely illuminating the air in front of their noses, and snatched Aqua’s hand.

As they ran, Vanitas summoned his helmet to block out as much of the stench as he could.  Aqua had no such shield, but she held her hand over her nose – which meant she could smell it too, even without an enhanced sense of smell.  That wasn’t good.

_“Sso impolite,”_ the wind _tsk tsk_ ed.  _“We merely wanted to give our thanksss for the awakening.”_

“Awakening?”  Aqua couldn’t help asking, even as Vanitas dragged her along.

“ _Yesss.  Sssuch loud voicccesss… impossssible to remain in our ssssslumber…”_

_Us. Our._ He didn’t like the sound of that.

“Shut up!”  The wind kept tickling his neck, but they were running faster now, legs eating the stone beneath them as it faded from black to grey.  His Dark Firaga winked out as the ambient light returned, but they weren’t safe yet.

The wind seemed to laugh, a high whistle, like breeze though ice-crusted branches.  _“Sssee usss now, ssee usss later, you_ will _ssssee ussss.”_

“No way in—” 

Aqua froze, snapping Vanitas’s arm back as he kept running.  “Come _on!_ What are you—!?”

His eyes bulged.  Looking back, he couldn’t see Aqua – he only saw a swirling cloud of acrid black smoke.

“Aqua!”  He grabbed her arm with both hands, but no matter how hard he yanked, she stayed locked in place.  Coughing wracked her body, its aftershocks traveling down the length of her arm into his.  “Aqua!  _Aeroga!”_

He didn’t practice wind spells often; he was afraid it wouldn’t be strong enough, but his other half’s affinity for the element didn’t fail him.  A massive roar of wind sent the mist fleeing down the tunnel – and also sent Aqua flying onto her back.

_“Yesssssss…”_ The voice hissed off into the distance. 

Vanitas stood shuddering, staring into the darkness as Aqua hacked and coughed, retching up the black smoke.  The uncanny memory came to him of the first time he cloaked her light; the darkness he had forced down her throat.  He’d taken a sick pleasure in that, then.  So why did the sight now only bring him a sickening fear?

“You’re fine,” he told her shakily, though he also meant it for himself.  “Just… just the wind.  Get up.”

She didn’t.  Her coughs faded to wheezes, heavy, heaving breaths, but otherwise she didn’t move.

“Come on.  We should be moving.”  He tapped her with the toe of his boot, trying to ignore the Fear Anxiety Panic pushing up from his skin.

No response.  Her eyes were closed; glistening droplets trailed down her cheeks. 

“Hey – hey, stop it.”  He winced.  Why did she have to freaking _cry?_ Yeah, it was a traumatic experience; sure, he was freaking out on the inside.  They’d heard a _voice,_ something _sentient_ , other than themselves.  But how was water coming out of her eyes going to fix anything?  “I said _stop!”_

_“No!”_ She finally snapped back at him.  “We are lost in the Realm of Darkness, we have _no idea_ where we are, and a dark mist with a _voice_ tried to kill me!  Don’t you _dare_ tell me to stop crying!”

She sobbed, full out _sobbed,_ so much scarier than her wracking coughs before.  Maybe even scarier than the voice itself.  His mouth froze half-open.  What could he say to make it stop?  Sobs echoed in the tunnel; he swore he could also hear echoes of the voice laughing, mocking them – _Yesss, cry your pathetic tearsss.  They will not ssssave you._ He shook the thought from his head.

“…Aqua?”  He tentatively crouched beside her, fingers almost brushing her arm, not quite brave enough.  “You – you’re stronger than this.  Get up.”

She shot him a glare through tear-soaked, reddened eyes.  Clearly this wasn’t working.  Her sobs resumed, chocked, shortened, but just as painful.  He ripped off his helmet, covering his ears.  What could make it _stop?_

“…Please,” he moaned.  “Please, Aqua…”

That caught her attention.  She silenced for a moment, merely sniffling.

“Will you… _please…_ get up?”  He forced the words out through near-gritted teeth.

“I—” She swallowed, “I – I can’t…”

“Aqua, it could come back,” he added seriously, and her eyes widened.  “We have to go.”

“Why?”  She demanded, voice cracking.  “Go _where?_ Can’t it just find us again?”

“Maybe not.”  He held onto that hope.  He had to.

“…I still can’t move.”  She coughed weakly.  “I really can’t.  The smoke… it took…”

He sighed.  She _did_ look pathetic; he’d give her that.  Face as pale as eggshells, goosebumps wrinkling her otherwise smooth skin.  Bleached lips trembling with words that wouldn’t form.

“Fine.”  He crouched beside her.  “Then you won’t be able to kill me if I carry you.”

He slid his arms under her back and knees without waiting for a reply, which never came anyway.  She was heavier than he expected, even remembering how she pinned him the first time he tried to touch her.  But he was strong.  It felt good to have the damsel-in-distress role properly reversed.

The stone slowly faded to a light tan, with sand thinly carpeting the floor.  Aqua barely shifted in his arms the whole way, only sniffling occasionally.  Miraculously, Vanitas had managed to avoid sending her into another sob-fest.

“You… must be tired,” she finally murmured, as his boots began to drag limply through the sand.

“I’m fine,” he insisted.  Forget the fact that his arms were burning, his spine creaked under her weight, his vision swam behind his mask.  He hadn’t fully recovered, either, but at least he was more darkness-tolerant than she was.

“If we’re… safe anywhere… we are here,” she said between breaths.

Funny she’d say that, when she’d been the one to say they _weren’t_ safe anywhere.  But he didn’t argue this time.

Aqua smiled when he rested her gently on the corridor’s sandy floor.  “Thank you, Van.”

After what they’d been through that day, the nickname barely provoked a response, positive or negative.  “Hmph.  Couldn’t wait on you forever,” he brushed it off.  She laughed weakly, but didn’t press it.

He lit a Fire – much dimmer than hers, but without his usual taint of darkness.  The pair stared into its flickering depths, wondering what words could possibly be appropriate after such a terrifying, surreal encounter.

“…Do you have any idea what it was?”  Aqua finally asked. 

“I already told you I don’t.”  He frowned, turning his head away.  He’d always assumed he knew everything about darkness, but this… Nothing had prepared him for this.

“Maybe that’s what we’ll become,” he suggested darkly, “when we die down here.”

Wide-eyed, she gasped at him.  Chuckling, he dissipated his mask, so she could see his impish grin.  “And here I thought you wanted _me_ to learn to take a joke?”

She shook her head with a grim frown.  “That’s not funny, Vanitas.”

Vanitas.  Not Van.  His frown mirrored hers.  “Not like I ever had a ‘humor’ teacher,” he muttered.  She didn’t seem to notice.

“I bet that’s what keeping the Heartless away, though.”  Even those monsters would be scared of it.”  She scooted closer to the fire.  “We need to get back to the surface.  As soon as possible.”

“What do you think we’ve been doing?”  He rolled his eyes, and she sighed.

“I know… Is your sense of smell working again?”

He took a deep breath, not getting his hopes up – but to his surprise, the scents were different.  The darkness was weaker in the direction they were now traveling, but was that just in comparison to the dark wind that they’d left behind?

“We’re going the right way now.”  It was a relief, to be able to give her a little bit of hope.  Her brow lifted in surprise, then relaxed with a laugh.

“Thank the light.”  Why would she say that?  It wasn’t like the light had done anything for them so far.  She tried to push herself to a sitting position, but her elbows trembled in futile protest.  “We should keep moving…”

“So you can fall back on your face?”  He snorted.  “Rest.  You were right.  If we’re safe anywhere, we’re safe here.”

“But…”

_“Rest.”_ It was an order not a request.

“What about you?”  She ignored him.  “Are you doing alright?  After almost fainting, and yesterday—”

“I’m fine.”  He scowled.  Yesterday was the last thing he wanted to think about.  “Just go to sleep already.”

She gave him a sad, pitying look, but he didn’t have to tell her again.  She rolled onto her side, her back to him.  Soon her breathing evened out; the stress and exhaustion of the “day” quickly sent her into unconsciousness.

For Vanitas, it wasn’t quite so easy.  The thoughts and emotions he’d been trying to evade quickly caught up with him.

What _was_ that wind?  He’d only been half-joking when he said it could be some damned soul trapped down here.  Nothing native to the Realm of Darkness was truly alive or sentient, much less could anything speak.  _But it did.  We weren’t imagining it…_ Unless the darkness had much greater power over minds than he thought, that wasn’t possible.

_Like this is possible?_ He scoffed at his own thoughts.  _Forget it.  I’m not going to hear them_ or _see them ever again._

Aqua shifted in her sleep, rolling over to face him.  For a moment her face seemed untroubled, serene.  Maybe for once, the darkness didn’t taint her dreams.

“Bet you’re dreaming of your loser friends.”  In spite of himself, the corner of his mouth twitched into a smile.  “Guess I count as one of those loser friends now, huh?”

Maybe it was his imagination, but her lips seemed to curve upwards, if only just a little.

Something shifted inside him.  Not near his skin, not like the irritating itch of Annoyance.  No, deeper, deeper, down to his core, his heart.

_What?_ He barely had time to think, before a fledgling emotion wisped out of his chest.

“What the—!?”  Before it was half-formed, he made a move to grip the Unversed’s neck – but his hand stopped short.

The tendril, the semisolid mist emerging from him – it wasn’t dark.  It wasn’t black, or blue, or purple, or any other shade of unbridled negativity.  It was pure white.

Vanitas stared, awe and disbelief jumbled together.  He stopped trying to hold it back; the white fog slowly, gently precipitated into the form of the tiniest Unversed he’d ever seen.  A Flood, by its general shape, but no Flood had ever been as small as the length of his hand before.  And no Flood had light blue eyes, either.

“You… what _are_ you?”  He whispered, leaning forward onto his knees.

It didn’t answer, of course, but he did feel a strange warmth radiating from it – not necessarily heat, but… comfort.  It was the strangest sensation.

The tiny, glowing Flood scampered towards Aqua’s sleeping form.  Showing no hesitation, it curled itself into the crook of her arm, like a cuddly snowball.  Or a teddy bear, the way Aqua unconsciously hugged it closer.

“You didn’t come from… not from me,” Vanitas denied.  As if his words were a signal, the Flood dissolved into a mist of light that Vanitas breathed in.  Aqua shivered, rolling back to her other side and curling further in on herself.

Vanitas laid back, wide eyes drilling a hole in the stone ceiling.  _An Unversed… of light?  No way.  I must be dreaming._

But he never had dreams – not good ones, anyway.  Not one where he felt peace, the gentle warmth that had been breathed back into him at the Unversed’s departure.

_And I thought yesterday was the weirdest it could get._ Stupid.  This was the Realm of Darkness.  They could still only be scratching the surface.  If that voice was only the beginning…

No.  That was the last thing he wanted to think of.  Just for a moment, he wished the strange Unversed would return with its comforting glow, even if it made less sense than the voice.  He didn’t dare try to recall it on purpose, though, not after yesterday.

_Losing it… I must be…_

Sleep took a long time coming, mixed with dreams of wind and voices and Unversed drowning him in blinding light.  Scary as the nightmares were, however, it was nothing compared to when he woke up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #cliffhanger #sorrynotsorry #actuallysorryIhaven’tupdatedinforever #toomanyhashtags


	13. Sick

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand here we are, about a year and a half since I last updated this.  I was in Minnesota as a missionary, and now I’m home and hopefully ready to finish some of my fanfiction!  I was glad to find this chapter half-finished in one of my notebooks.  I’m working on an original story too, so I’m not sure how consistent I’ll be about updating, but whenever I write myself into a corner on that I’ll probably be working on this.  Vanitas and Aqua are just so fun to write.

Vanitas typically slept on edge, ready to fight should any danger approach in the night.  Even the nightmares didn’t trap him enough to dampen his sense of real danger.  So when Aqua’s breath grew rapid, it only took him seconds to awaken.

He leapt to his feet, keyblade flashing to hand, sure that the evil wind had returned.  But his Fire was still there, illuminating the sandy corridor enough to tell that wasn’t the case.  Besides, there was no sewer-worthy stench assaulting his nose.

Still, something was certainly wrong.  Dismissing his keyblade, he knelt by Aqua’s side.  She trembled with shivers and quick, shallow breaths; her suit felt ice cold when he shook her shoulders.  He frowned. Clearly her pleasant dreams hadn’t lasted.  Even there, her friends couldn’t protect her.

“Get up, Aqua.  You’re having stupid nightmares too.”  He shook her again, but she didn’t seem to feel it.  She usually slept a little heavier than him, but touch was sure to jolt her awake, often violently.  “Aqua?”

Her eyelids flickered in the clutch of dreams.  Nightmares were annoying, sure, but not particularly dangerous.  He could ignore her and go back to sleep… but something still felt wrong.

Suddenly her shoulder blazed hot; he jerked his hand back with a shout.  She moaned, uncurling and spreading her limbs wide, her ragged skirt flaring out around her hips.

_Sick._ The word came to Vanitas’s mind.  Was this what it meant to be sick?  He had vague memories, from when he and Ventus were one, of physical sickness.  Fever.  He breathed a sigh of relief.  Probably just a regular fever, from the germs she’d been so paranoid about before.  Not the dark mist.  That was over, done.

His darker version of Curaga likely wasn’t the best to use on her, not after today’s darkness.  But his non-dark form might not be strong enough.

“Ugh, fine,” he muttered to himself, and hesitantly reached down to his emotions.  Ironically, it was his Nervousness about creating Unversed that took form as a Scrapper.  Thank the Void, just a normal Scrapper, dark blue with red eyes.

He summoned Void Gear and stabbed it through the chest.

“Nngh…” He always hated that, the pain and emotion both flooding him instantly.  As the Unversed dissipated, a few D-Link crystals scattered to the ground, but no items or HP orbs.  “Seriously?!”

Aqua moaned again, her face already glistening with sweat.  Fine.  He would try again.  Couldn’t have his only friend dying of something as stupid as germs.

Frustration manifested in a Thornbite by accident.  Stupid; Thornbites never dropped Potions or Panaceas.  He still sliced it in half, hoping for a few HP orbs at least.  To his relief, the green spheres bounced out of the dissolving Unversed; he quickly scooped them up and crushed them against Aqua’s blazing arm.

“What?”  He felt the soothing energy flow through him.  “No!  Not me, _her!_ Agh!”

If some of the healing power had made it into her, she didn’t show it.  She shuddered violently as she flashed cold again.

By this point, Vanitas wasn’t so sure it was a normal sickness.  Still, even if it was somehow darkness-induced, she needed a healing item.

He hated making Vile Phials; they tended to manifest mostly out of Disgust, and when that Disgust returned, it often made him sick to his stomach.  But that was just a feeling.  Aqua was sick for real, and Vile Phials were his best shot at getting some useful items.

Thinking back to the smell of the dark wind, Vanitas pulled Disgust to the surface, enough for three of the bottle-shaped Unversed.  Clenching his eyes shut, he braced himself and destroyed the Vile Phials with a pure wave of darkness.

Fortunately, two spilled a High-Potion each, and the last a Curaga command.  He gulped down one of the High-Potions before the pain and nausea could hit him fully.  He hated to accept it, but gone were the days when he could handle hordes of fledgling emotions flooding back into him with hardly a flinch.  Of course, he only had to hide the pain when Xehanort was watching.  Without the daily practice of numbing himself to that pain, he had grown too weak, sensitive.  Pathetic.

But now wasn’t the time to wallow in self-pity.  He scooped up the other High-Potion, unstoppered it, and knelt again at Aqua’s side.

Sweat coated her again – her hair was matted with it now – but her teeth still chattered violently, as if she couldn’t decide what temperature to be.

“Hold still,” he command, not that she could hear.  She was more likely unconscious than sleeping if this didn’t wake her; this sickness thing was more serious than he’d thought.  Her teeth still chattered, impossible to pour the Potion through.  He grasped her jaw firmly with his left hand.  Though the force of her chatters vibrated his arm, he could hold her mouth open enough to dribble in most of the Hi-Potion.  Some splashed onto her cheeks and chin, sinking through the skin and relaxing her taught muscles.  But would it help with the sickness?

Moments passed – and her shaking turned to stillness.  Her jaw trembled slightly, her forehead still glistened with sweat, but her skin felt normal to the touch.

“Aqua?”  He asked hopefully.  Her steady breathing was the only response.  He shook her shoulder, forgetting to be gentle – and realized that her temperature was already falling again.  The Hi-Potion’s effect had only been temporary.  “No, Aqua!  Stop being sick!”

Her teeth began to chatter, quiet but sharp, like flint on steel.  _“Not ssso sssimple…”_

Vanitas froze, blood colder than hers.  That voice— He shook his head, black hair flying into his eyes.  No.  His mind was playing tricks on him, right?  His fear was just catching up to him.

“You’re going to be fine, Aqua,” he said, more for his benefit than hers.  “I’ll kill you if you aren’t.”

Mind racing for a new plan, his eyes caught sight of the fallen Curaga command.  He dived towards it, flinging out his arms as he skidded across the sand.  Cure was his worst element – Xehanort felt that pain was an effective teaching tool and hadn’t wanted it too easily diluted.  Besides, Potions were more reliable and (usually) easier to come by. 

“Come on…” His fingers fumbled the Curaga command; it slipped back into the sand.  Cursing, he scooped it back up, tossed Dark Splicer out of his deck, and slapped in the replacement.  His usual Curaga wasn’t particularly strong, but with the command installed, its power might be boosted enough to work.

“ _Curaga!”_ He shouted, hands vicegripping her shoulders.  Sluggishly a green glow – more like a thick, radioactive syrup – diffused from his palms, through her suit, into her skin.  He swore he could feel the goosebumps bubbling up under her suit even as her fever skyrocketed.

“Don’t even think about it,” he threatened the fever, pumping out more of the green syrup with a vengeance.   Was it just a vain hope, or was her temperature dropping again?

He didn’t realize he was holding his breath until her temperature stabilized at a natural warmth, her breathing evened, her goosebumps retracted.  Her taught muscles, stiff with the exertion of her internal battle with germs, finally slackened.

“Va… Van?”  Aqua barely breathed, and her eyelids twitched open.  Before he realized what he was doing, his arms had flung themselves around her.  The green glow was still fading from his palms when he pulled them back, shoving himself away like he would catch her sickness.  If he was trying to hug her, maybe he already had.

“If you ever get sick again, I’ll kill you,” he vowed, but his gaze dodged hers.

“I’m sorry.”

“What the—don’t apologize!  It isn’t your fault!”  He scrambled to his feet, kicking up sand.

“You had to—” she coughed out the sand he’d disturbed, “—save my life.  _Again.”_ She scowled, but it looked more thoughtful than angry.  “At least, I assume you saved my life.  It must have been serious, for you to worry so much and for me to still feel so drained…”  She rubbed her forehead.  “What exactly was wrong with me?”

“You were hot and cold, back and forth.”  He didn’t want to describe much more than that.  Especially not the part where she might have sounded like the… He didn’t want to think about it.  No use worrying her more when it was probably just his mind playing tricks on him anyway.  “But you’re fine now.  Right?”

She nodded.  “Just a… little dizzy.  But I’ll shake it off.”

“Good.”  He held out a hand to pull her to her feet; he was a little surprised when she actually accepted it.  “Let’s get out of here.  I like darkness as much as the next guy, but this place is…”  Well, this place was basically hell.

Aqua seemed to get the unsaid sentiment, nodding.  “Lead the way.”

He was glad to, finally feeling a little more in control again, with his nose leading them away from the direction of the dark wind.  She wobbled a little as they walked, leaning against the tan stone of the wall occasionally.  He wasn’t that much better.  Panic and Anxiety still clawed below the surface, both from Aqua’s sickness and the evil they were leaving behind.  It made him want to sprint away as fast as his feet would take him, but Aqua wouldn’t last long at that pace.

Eventually, they reached a chamber with three branching corridors, stalactites dripping sand from above.  He scrunched his face and took a whiff of the musty air.  And another… and another.  He let out a groan.  “Seriously, _again?”_

Aqua frowned in worry.  “Is your nose…?”

“Not working.”  He huffed.  “What’s the point of being a heart of darkness if I can’t keep my awesome smelling skills?”

Thankfully, Aqua didn’t point out that he may not be entirely darkness, at least not anymore.  That was a small mercy, but the thought brought up a fear he hadn’t considered:  was he losing his sense of smell _because_ he was growing less dark?  Between Aqua’s light rubbing off on him, making friends, that bright Unversed the night prior…  The thought of not being all dark still sickened and confused him, in spite of his conversation with Aqua.  But he wouldn’t dwell on that now, when he had bigger concerns. 

Like the fact that if he couldn’t navigate them through the Realm of Darkness, Aqua had no reason to stay with him.

“It’s…” Aqua swallowed.  “It’s going to be okay.  As soon as we can find our way to the top, I’m sure it will start working again.”

He wasn’t.  But he nodded anyway.  “Now we just have to figure out how to do that.”

He paced back and forth, mind racing.  There _had_ to be a way out.  Give up on that hope, and he’d give up on everything. 

“The tunnels could take us in any direction.  We have no idea which ones are safe, forget which ones will get us above ground.”

“Way to look on the bright side.”  Aqua sighed.

“Hey, I’m just talking it out.  Something you taught me.  You got any ‘brighter’ ideas?”

Her hand instinctively went to her hip, rubbing her star-shaped charm.  That didn’t worry him too much here; they’d already determined that even Heartless had better sense than to come down here.  Of course, that was before the evil voice.  “We need to find a way…”  She gasped, eyes lighting.  “Find a way.  Wayfinder!”

“Please tell me that’s a real idea and you’re not just making up words.”

She unlooped her charm from her belt and held it up for him to see.  “This charm – it’s called a Wayfinder.”

He blinked, unimpressed.  While he might not be worried about the thing attracting hordes of Heartless, that didn’t mean he didn’t hate it.

“I’ve never thought of it this way – I don’t know for sure if it will even work—”

“Well _that’s_ reassuring.”

“—But it’s worth trying, isn’t it?”  Aqua asked.

“Trying _what?”_ He countered.  “Lighting it up with the power of friendship?  Hoping it leads us out with some magical rainbows?  For all you know it could make that – that _voice_ show up again.”

That was enough to make her stop and think, but then she replied, “Light… light is stronger than darkness.  Always.”  Her voice wavered, as if she were trying to convince herself as much as him.  “If attempting this attracts it, maybe it will give us power to defeat it.”

He was a little offended by her “light-beats-darkness” comment, but so far in their case it had proved true – Aqua had always beaten Vanitas, until she was weakened by a horde of Heartless, anyway.  Blaming his losses on their type matchups might actually be better for his pride.  Not that he was convinced she was right, though.

He crossed his arms.  “And if not?”

Her blue eyes fixed on his, finding her confidence again.  “The worst case scenario is we die.”  Her voice cracked, just barely, on the last word.  “A number of other things could kill us down here before that voice.”

It was a fair point.  The latter half, anyway.  He wasn’t convinced death was the worst the Realm of Darkness had to offer.  He’d scared Aqua with the thought that the dark voice could be the souls of people who’d died down here; now the thought came back to haunt him.  Anything that could possibly lead them out of the underground and away from that was a risk worth taking.

“Fine,” he reluctantly agreed.  “But if you get us both killed, I get to say I told you so.”

“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t, Van.”  Her small smile brightened the room, but not as much as the star charm – Wayfinder, she called it – that began to glow in her palms. A gasp of surprise left her mouth, as if she hadn’t meant to start yet.  At first that caused him a twinge of worry, but then her eyes closed in concentration.  Bright magic began to pour from her fingertips, threads weaving around the Wayfinder’s glassy surface.

He whistled, for once not hiding that he was impressed.  “Figured that out pretty fast.”

“I – didn’t figure out much.  It called to my magic, somehow—” She grunted; the charm seemed to take a lot of magic out of her, for such an innocent-looking object.  It better not need too much.  If Aqua ran out, he sure didn’t have any light magic to contribute.  Except… he pushed away the thought of the tiny white Flood.  He had no idea how he’d done that anyway, and even if he did, he didn’t want to repeat it, or even let Aqua know about it.  Not only would it add more evidence to her argument, it was also just plain embarrassing. 

Aqua gasped as the last bit of magic wisped from her fingers.  The Wayfinder pulsed with a blue glow, but so far, nothing else happened.  It would figure, if after all their arguing, the charm turned out to be a useless trinket anyway.

Then, just as he was about to tell Aqua to stop holding her breath, the Wayfinder released a sparkling beam.  The thin ray of light nearly shot straight through Vanitas’s stomach before he threw himself towards the wall.

_So it basically is leading the way with magical rainbows._ Rainbows, white light, same difference.  It was all light.

Aqua laughed, a quiet, disbelieving sound at first, which quickly rose in volume and pitch as she flung her arms around Vanitas.  Her no-touching rule was getting broken left and right.  “It worked!  Van, it _worked!_ We’re getting out of here!  We’re finally—”

She moaned; he suddenly found himself supporting her weight.  “Van… what…?”

His stomached dropped as he felt her suit begin to grow cold again.  “You just used all your magic, and you’re still recovering.  What did you expect?”  He didn’t tell her about the chill leaking through her suit.  If she was still conscious, she was fine.  No point spoiling her victory with worry.  Besides, it really could just be that she used her magic too fast.

“Sorry.”  She grimaced, gaining her footing again after another moan.  Why did she suddenly find the need to apologize so much over stupid things?  She never did for her jabs at his darkness.

“Stop apologizing.  You’re not _that_ heavy.”  Well, she was pretty heavy, but he was strong.  She frowned at his comment, but it didn’t last long before a satisfied smile replaced it.  She looped her Wayfinder around her belt; the sparkle-beam wavered for a moment as the strap interrupted it, but then it stabilized.

“You can save the backhanded compliments for later.  Now, we’re getting out of here.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where it says “the Wayfinder pulsed with a blue glow,” there was originally a typo that said “The Wayfinder pulsed with a glue glow.”  XD


	14. Dive

If she had been physically able to, Vanitas was sure Aqua would have sprinted nonstop to the edge of the Realm of Darkness.  As it was, they had to have followed the sparkling trail for miles through tunnels and chambers before another dizzy spell nearly sent her toppling head over heels.  Instead she managed to just collapse to her knees.  Dry heaves wracked her body, with no real food in her stomach.  The Wayfinder’s guiding beacon flickered, then winked out.

“Aqua!”  Vanitas knelt beside her, placing a palm to her forehead and shoving down Panic that tried to manifest as a Yellow Mustard.  “You’re burning up.  We’re never going to get out of here if you kill yourself from something as stupid as exhaustion first.”

She just groaned, one hand going to her head, another to her stomach, as if unsure which hurt worse.  “A break… wouldn’t be so bad, I suppose…”

Vanitas was pretty sure that with both of them having carried each other over the past day, the no-touching rule was out the window.  But since Aqua was still fully conscious this time, he figured he’d better ask anyway.  “Can I use Curaga on you?”

She nodded weakly, eyes overcast.  Shuffling to crouch in front of her, he placed his hands on her shoulders.  “Curaga.”  The green molasses began to sweat from his palms.  Its soft glow felt eerie in the dark tunnel; he found himself missing the illumination of the Wayfinder’s light-trail.

“You can’t cast from a distance?”  She found the strength to ask, looking puzzled. 

“Not unless you want a Dark Curaga.  And trust me, you don’t.”  The radioactive-looking healing magic slowed at his words; he willed it to flow faster.  A simple Cure he could cast farther away, but for a stronger spell, this was the best way.  Slow and tedious, but the best he could do.  Aqua, skilled at magic as she was, was probably laughing at him on the inside.

“Would you like me to teach you?”  She asked, surprising him with the sincerity of her offer.  No mockery, no overtone of superiority.  “Not right now, of course.  I need to regain my strength.”

His gut reaction would have been to snap, _I’m fine._ That he didn’t need help.  Asking for help was for losers… but, ironically, helping each other had been the only thing that had _stopped_ them from losing to this place so far.

“…Sure.  Why not.”  In battle, it could be the difference between saving Aqua’s life and watching her die.  A ranged Curaga could let him protect her.

…Since when did he _want_ to protect her?  For reasons other than because she held the key to escaping the Realm of Darkness, or because he was bored, anyway.  No, this time, he just didn’t want her to be in pain.

Was this how it felt, then?  Was this what compelled Aqua to always go chasing after those idiots Terra and Ventus?  This sensation, a weird warmth, felt something like a contained fire.  Driven and purposeful.  He _would_ protect her.  Just like he’d already been trying to, but something had shifted in that brief moment of introspection:  his heart was in it now.

Aqua suddenly gasped, eyes the size of Heartless’, and scrambled back from him.  _“Van!”_

The green glow disappeared from his hands, but the tunnel remained lit.  He spun around, and realized why.

Behind him stood a glowing white Bruiser.  A scream burst from his mouth; he fell back against the sandy ground.  But the Bruiser just stood there.  The part of its chest that was usually black had swapped itself for a pale orange.  Like its predecessor, the tiny Flood, its eyes were a deep blue.

“Van – what are you _doing?”_

I don’t know!”  He yelled, hands clenching fistfuls of his black hair.  _That_ wouldn’t change color with this stupid influx of light, would it?  It was a dumb thing to worry about, but for all the years spent wearing a mask, he _liked_ his black hair.

The Bruiser sat down beside him, plopping down on its fat white butt.  Vanitas screamed, which made Aqua yelp.  Still, the Bruiser remained tame; this wasn’t like the schism that had happened a few days ago.  He had worried about the white Unversed having something to do with that… Experimentally, and before he really thought his idea through, he let a Triple Wrecker of Confusion form in front of him.

“Vanitas, no!  We have to find out—” Aqua’s sentence cut off.  The Bruiser’s lightning-shaped eyes narrowed, becoming two narrow blue bolts.  Since when could they change facial expressions?  It quickly rocked to its feet, hurling itself at the Triple Wrecker in the same motion.  Its tricolored pieces scattered.

“…What is going on…?”  She finished.  But Vanitas finally knew.

The Triple Wrecker reassembled with the blue piece at center, firing a shot of Blizzard at the Bruiser.  The bright Unversed stepped into the hit, splaying its arms as if…

…As if to protect him and Aqua.

Vanitas shot Dark Thundaga at the Triple Wrecker.  It puffed into oblivion and a Wellspring Crystal, its negativity trailing back into him with a not-too-terrible dose of pain.  The bright Bruiser sat back down, satisfied, now that the “threat” was past.

Vanitas hadn’t made it to a standing position in the first place, and now he flopped on his back.

“I’ve gone insane,” he muttered, closing his eyes to his Unversed’s glow.  His Unversed’s _light._ “You might as well kill me now, Aqua.  Put an end to me.”

“No!”  She shouted, horrified at his words.  Weird, he registered faintly.  Not long ago she would’ve taken any opportunity to kill him.  But now they were friends.  And _that_ was why this was happening.  She had turned him inside out, turned his emotions against themselves.

He wanted to run, but couldn’t find the will for it.  He couldn’t run from himself.  But he could run from her…

The Bruiser must have felt his urge to flee, because it scooped him up and took off on its stubby legs.

They didn’t get far, however, before a burst of Firaga took the Unversed from behind.  Vanitas fell to the ground with a shout.  There was pain, but just from the fall – the Unversed’s aura, like the light Flood’s, didn’t hurt on its way back in.  The warmth inside just returned: the drive to protect Aqua.

“Why can’t anything just make _sense?!”_ Running from her, wanting to protect her, blaming her for this emotional whirlpool.  If only he could get rid of the emotions, all of them – but they were a part of him.  Without them, he’d be nothing, nobody.  Or maybe just a real Heartless.  He wished the dark creatures were down here; he itched to beat something with his keyblade, though at the same time he was immobilized, trapped inside his own head.

He might as well be fighting Ventus on their Dive platform again, for the forces raging inside them.  It took every shred of his self control to keep them from exploding in another, maybe even larger schism of Unversed.

He had light in him.  He knew it, couldn’t hide from it anymore.  The tiny Flood was one thing, but a whole _Bruiser?_ And then there was his sense of smell.  Everything slipping away from him, everything he was.  And for what?  A pot of ice cream?  Aqua being his friend?

Happiness?

It was all unknown.  That was why people were afraid of the dark, he’d heard – it was unknown, unseeable.  But he knew the darkness; it was the light he couldn’t stare into.  What else would it change about him?  Would he become just like Ventus?

He curled into a pathetic ball at the thought.  Just like Ventus… he might as well have been the weaker half, have been reabsorbed when they merged, have become nothing…

Tears stained his face.  The gritty sand of the ground stuck to his cheek.  For a moment, he really wished Aqua _would_ kill him.  Being dead was better than being nothing.

But the moment passed; too much of his feral instinct screamed that he wanted to live.  Why? _Why?_ What was there for him besides being torn apart, inside and out, lost in madness –

“Van!  _Vanitas!”_ Aqua shook him roughly.  His eyes fluttered open – he hadn’t realized he’d shut them – and he took in her ghost-pale face.  “What’s happening?  Are you sick too?”  She cast Curaga on him just to be safe; it soothed his physical pains, but did nothing for his fractured mind.  Fractured heart.  “Please, talk to me.  If it was something I said…”

“No,” he forced out.  “It’s something you _are.”_

She recoiled; her eyes flashed in pain.  The Regret pierced through his armor of self-control, becoming a swarm of weepy-eyed Mandrakes.  That opened the floodgates.  Bruisers, Archravens, Tank Topplers, Thornbites, Axe Flappers – Unversed tore themselves from him, the pain of each one fueling the creation of the next.  A shrill scream rent the air.  His own.  No sight of Aqua now, the Unversed piled around him, pushing him harder against the ground.  Small rocks mixed with the sand dug into his cheek; he thought he could smell blood.

This was wrong, so, so _wrong._ The Unversed were under _his_ control, not the other way around.  But there was so much pain – it felt choking, like with each Unversed he spawned, his throat and chest grew tighter and tighter, a fist closing around his insides.

He’d thought that Aqua should kill him.  Now, maybe he was just doing the job himself.

He had no energy left for screaming.  He just had enough for one small thought – what would happen to her if he died?

She had the Wayfinder now.  With that leading the way, and his dark suit protecting her from the mobs of Heartless, she would be safe.  She might be better off, even, not having a time-bomb waiting to explode into hundreds of Unversed at any moment.

Unversed still swarming over him, face still in the sand, he found himself smiling.  In spite of all of this, he _still_ wanted to protect her.  And he still would.  Hadn’t he just promised that to himself?

The thought made the storm of Unversed pouring from him wane.  _But,_ he remembered, _wanting to protect her is what got me here in the first place.  Her light, and my Unversed…_

And the storm raged again.  It ripped another scream from him lips.  There was nothing outside of the Unversed, the black tempest around him.

_Nothing… that’s all I am…_

They drew too much of his strength.  Too much.

Everything faded to black – if it hadn’t been black enough already.

XXX

Vanitas was falling.

_Am I dead?  Am I falling into the Realm of Darkness again?  Is this just a nightmare to live over and over?  Anything but tha,t please, I’ll even merge with that idiot Ventus, I don’t care, just don’t make me do this again!_

Sensations cut through the panic.  Well, one sensation: that of being wet.  He was underwater.  He hadn’t been in water often, and Xehanort had never taught him to bathe, but Vanitas remembered the feeling from Ventus.  Shouldn’t he be drowning?  He kept falling – sinking – only the sinking felt as fast as falling.  Maybe _this_ would go on forever?

_I swear, if I get another concussion…_ Just as he thought it, an unseen force flipped him, so he was no longer falling head-first.  His descent slowed, until his boots touched down on… well, nothing, it looked like.  The ground was just as dark as the water around him.

Until layers of the darkness, like papers caught in a whirlwind, peeled up from around his feet.  He jumped, Void Gear flashing to hand, but the papers – no, _birds –_ what the heck were birds doing underwater? – flew off with no attempt to harm him.  That was his first clue that this wasn’t the Realm of Darkness.

The second was what was revealed by the black birds’ departure.

“No way,” he breathed.  He’d been here before.  But it was impossible; he and Ventus had shattered this place during their final battle.  Inside his heart… “That’s it.  I have gone insane.”

_“Not exactly,”_ came a reply that pierced him to the bones.  He wanted to jump, but it seemed to pin his feet to the stained glass below, froze his hands to his blade.

“Who’s there?”  He demanded.  He spun, searching the darkness in the dim light emanating from the glass underfoot.  No point in looking at that too closely; he had no desire to see Ventus’s image mirroring his own.

There was no response, but that allowed his ears to pick up on the eerie music filtering through the darkness, as if there were a possessed organ somewhere in the distance.  Or was that chanting?  A possessed choir?  Had that been here last time?  His battle with Ventus would’ve made it too loud to tell.

“I asked you a question, idiot!”  This day was _too freaking weird_ to take crap from yet _another_ disembodied voice.  At least he could tell they were different; this new voice felt like… a part of him.  But that was probably just the insanity talking.

_“That’s not very nice.”_

“Good.”  Vanitas snorted.  “What are you, my conscience?”

_“I guess you could say that.”_

Pfft.  Like he had a conscience.  But if he did, it was probably the reason behind his insanity.

“Well get out!  I don’t need you!”

_“If you say so.”_ The voice gave a patronizing laugh, like one would give to a young child insisting he could dress himself.

Vanitas somehow felt the presence leave.  Like the void got emptier, the darkness darker.  Maybe he shouldn’t have ordered it away so rashly…

His pride demanded that he not call back to it.  “Stupid Conscience.”

What now?  Stuck here, inside his head – heart, whatever – nothing to distract him but the glass floor.  He finally couldn’t keep his eyes away from it.  When he examined it, he wished he could believe it was more than the product of his fragmented mind.

Ventus was gone.  Well, not completely – his face filled a small circle next to glass-Vanitas’s head – but still, it was something.  What that meant exactly, he didn’t know for sure.  That he had finally escaped his light half?  Even if he ran to the other side of the universe, he doubted he ever could.  And he should know; the Realm of Darkness _was_ the other side of the universe.

Ventus’s face wasn’t the only one circumscribed on the pillar, though.

“Aqua…”  His heart squirmed, which didn’t make any sense, considering he was supposedly standing in it.  Half of him wanted to tell Aqua’s face to get lost, that she had no right to emblazon herself in his heart.  The other half, the probably-more-insane half, felt… proud.  He, a being of darkness, had collected one of the strongest champions of light in his heart.  How many people could say _that?_ Plus, it was a relief that Ventus wasn’t the only face to stare back at him.

The background had changed, too.  Rather than a silhouette of the Keyblade Graveyard, dark purple, blue, and grey rock formations swept in a crescent around the bottom edge of the pillar.  The Realm of Darkness… if this wasn’t a figment of his imagination, maybe the platform had rebuilt itself when he fell into this nightmare.

If it had rebuilt itself, it hadn’t done a perfect job of it.  Hairline fractures webbed the glass panes, like blood vessels pumping liquid darkness.

His hand rose to cover his heart, or at least, where it should be.  It wasn’t hard to see why the cracks would be there.  If he really _was_ separated from Ventus, his heart shouldn’t be whole.  No matter how much he wished it was.

“Is this really all I am?”  He muttered.  “Still just a broken tool…?”

_“I wouldn’t say that.”_

“Shut up, Conscience.  No one asked you.”  Couldn’t he even be alone inside his own head?

_“Well, maybe you should.”_

Ask his _conscience_ what it thought of him?  He might be insane, but he wasn’t _crazy._ Still, he felt its presence waiting, like an invisible stare.

“Fine, if you know so much, what do _you_ think I am?”

It didn’t reply immediately.  Did a conscience need to take time to think?

_“You are human.”_

“H- _human?_ You’re kidding.”  Conscience was just a product of insanity, what did it know?

_“Would that really be so bad?”_

“Yes.”  _Human._ Why would he want to be human?  He had been once, as part of Ventus.  He had been weak then.  Too weak to please Xehanort, too weak to defend himself from the Heartless.

Too weak to protect his heart from being broken.

_“Hmm… I could tell you about who you are.  But maybe it would be better for you to find out yourself.”_

Before he could argue, a crystalline door phased into existence at the top edge of the platform.

“Whatever, Conscience.”  He dashed for the door and flung it open, only to find himself in the Keyblade Graveyard.  His eyes shut to the suddenly blinding sun, but his eyelids provided little protection.  Instead he summoned his mask, which was much more useful.  Still, compared to the Realm of Darkness and the inside of his heart, the wasteland might as well be the surface of the sun.

Which, once his eyes stopped burning, wasn’t so bad.  He never thought he’d be _glad_ to be back in the Keyblade Graveyard, but the warm light, soft scent of dust, and gentle non-evil wind embraced him like a hug.  …If he’d liked hugs.

“Just remember, this is all in your head,” he muttered before realizing how stupid he sounded.  “Great, now I’m talking to myself.  Is that worse than talking to my conscience…?”

“Vanitas.”  _That_ was a voice he recognized.  How could he forget one of his least-favorite idiots?

He turned around to face the source of the voice, which at least wasn’t disembodied this time.  “Terra.  Who invited _you_ to my heart?”  He couldn’t get the right amount of contempt into his voice.  Staying angry just took too much energy.  Especially when, like this Terra-hallucination, no one shot an appropriate amount of anger back.

“What are you so afraid of?”  Terra asked, as if he hadn’t heard him at all.

“Nothing,” he spat back, “except maybe being stuck here with a loser like you.”

He spun to walk away, leaping off of a ledge into a wide crater and landing in a crouch.

“What are you so afraid of?”

Vanitas stood only to stumble back with a curse.  How had the brown haired idiot gotten in front of him again?

“I’m afraid of the dark,” he lied in deadpan before stalking off.  He made it about halfway across the crater before looking over his shoulder to make sure the hallucination-Terra wasn’t following him.

He was gone.  Vanitas only had a second to wonder how before he walked into something solid.

“Ow!”  He rubbed the side of his helmet.  That didn’t do anything, really, but it made him feel better.

“What are you so afraid of?”  Terra stood in front of him, his muscular chest the source of Vanitas’s injury.

He cursed, pushing down Panic.  What would happen if he released an Unversed here, in what was probably another illusion of his heart?  He didn’t want to trigger some kind of emotion-ception.

“What are _you_ afraid of?”  He countered, summoning his keyblade.  “’Cause if you’re smart, the answer should be me.”

Terra’s eyes narrowed, regarding Void Gear as if it were a fly in his ice cream.  Then he summoned his own blade, the bronze Earthshaker.

Vanitas laughed and took up his battle stance.  He’d always dreamed of fighting Terra.  Stupid Xehanort had always, _always_ forbidden him, with explicit threats of permanent bodily harm if he tried.  Probably because Xehanort knew that if Vanitas got his hands on Terra, _he_ would be the one suffering from permanent bodily harm.  The old geezer didn’t like the idea of possessing a body missing an arm or leg.

What Xehanort didn’t know, however, was _why_ he hated Terra.  Aside form the keyblade wielder’s larger stature and general stupidity, Terra had taken the role of Ventus’s older brother.  Vanitas had spied on the Land of Departure (both for Xehanort and to satisfy his own curiosity) enough times to know that Ventus was closest with Terra.  If Vanitas could take that away… maybe then his light half would understand just a little bit of the pain he felt on an everyday basis.

Plus, Terra was slow.  This should be easy as making Floods.

The taller keyblade wielder wordlessly took up his own battle stance.  Then Vanitas charged, whirling in with a downward strike.  Terra brushed it away with his blade, like the attack was little more than a stray breeze.  Growling, Vanitas slid to the side and tried to find an opening for a combo, but the all-too-solid illusion parried each of his strikes with sturdy blocks.  The recoil sent Vanitas skidding back on the dry ground.

“What are you so afraid of?”  Terra repeated the only words his idiot brain could apparently say, but this time they were accompanied by a smirk.

That fueled Vanitas’s rage.  Smirking was _his_ thing.

With a battle cry mostly consisting of unintelligible screams, he leapt in again.  His fierce jab nearly pierced Terra’s sternum, but he slid back at the last second, retaliating with a swinging upward strike.  Vanitas barely turned Void Gear in time to block, but the clash still twisted his wrist at a painful angle.  He cringed, wishing he’d braced the block with his free hand.  How long had it been since he’d dueled a proper opponent?

Oh.  When he had forged the X-Blade.  Right.

“Is that all you’ve got?”  He taunted in frustration, hoping some sort of reaction from Terra would give him an opening.  “I’ve seen Shadows fight better than you!”

Not his most creative (or honest) insult, and Terra seemed to know it.  Not rising to the bait, he swung at Vanitas again, this time not pulling away when their keyblades clashed.  Sweat dripped down Vanitas’s masked forehead as he tried to hold his ground against the larger keybearer.  It was no use.  Physical strength just wasn’t on his side.

Terra overpowered him, sending him crashing to the ground, his keyblade a thin barrier between Earthshaker and his throat.

_This is it.  I’m going to die here, fighting an idiot inside my head.  If I die in my head, do I die in real life?_ Ventus had broken the X-Blade in his head and he’d basically died from that, so the odds weren’t really in his favor.

But Terra simply paused, keeping the pressure on his blade, and repeated his question.  _“What are you so afraid of?”_

Vanitas flinched at the edge in his voice.  Illusion or not, he was serious about making him answer seriously.  Realizing that might be his only chance to come out of this alive, he wracked his mind for the answer.  It seemed illusion-Terra didn’t just want to know what he was afraid of, but what he was afraid of _most._

The truth was, Vanitas feared a lot of things.  Losing, like he just had to Terra, was up there – but he’d faced a lot of losses, and come out fine… mostly, anyway.  He feared Xehanort as much as he hated the old geezer, but he felt decently safe from him now, exiled to the Realm of Darkness.  Ironic that anything about the hellish place could feel safe.

The harder Terra pressed, the harder Vanitas searched himself.  Apparently this was a timed test.  He had only gone to public school for a few years before Xehanort had “adopted” (read: _kidnapped)_ him/Ventus, but that had been long enough to develop a hatred of timed tests.

He was afraid of the light, but at the same time he wasn’t.  Afraid of what it could do to him, yes – the burning, the needles in his heart – but he couldn’t completely get rid of his sick longing for it.  Like a horribly addictive drug.

Was he afraid of _being_ light?  It owning a piece of him?  Like Ventus had once owned him.  That was getting closer.  Just like Void Gear was being pressed closer to his throat.

“I’m – I’m afraid—” He gasped, searching the unformed Unversed inside him for the last piece of his answer.  “I’m afraid of being broken!  I’m afraid I’ll just be half a heart, forever.  There, are you happy?”

The pressure on his blade disappeared as Terra relaxed.  He stood straight, banishing Earthshaker with a satisfied smile.

“Is being broken really so bad?”

Vanitas blinked in surprise, about to argue his point, but it died on his tongue.  In that blink, Terra had disappeared.

“Seriously?  That was it?”  He pushed himself to his feet, heart still beating fast.  Maybe dueling the other keybearer had been a bad idea, but at least he’d gotten out some anger.  In spite of his sore arms and heavier breathing, he felt better than he had in a long time.

A glimpse of blue caught his peripheral vision – he turned and saw Aqua standing at the other side of the crater.

“Aqua!”  He called, running to her.  “Thank the Void, I—” He skidded to a stop.  Something was off.  Her clothes – she wore her outfit from back in the Realm of Light, puffy sleeves and skirt-wrap included.  No dark suit.  “You’re a hallucination too, aren’t you?”

She didn’t answer his question.  She calmly looked him in the eye and asked, “What is most important to you?”

He wanted to snarl at her, Annoyance rising, but he knew by now that that wouldn’t do any good.  No point in getting into another duel right after getting his butt kicked by Terra.  Thankfully, since he wasn’t fighting for his life this time, he could think a little more clearly.

What was most important to him?  That question used to be easy.  Forging the X-Blade, hands down.  But obviously that wasn’t an option anymore.

Honestly, he hadn’t thought much about this since then.  Mostly he just thought about what he didn’t want – didn’t want to be light, didn’t want to be stuck in the Realm of Darkness, didn’t want himself or Aqua to die.  But as for what he did want, what was important…

“Survival,” he answered simply.  “Staying alive.”

Aqua, or rather, illusion-Aqua, smiled.  “Is staying alive really so important?”

“…Are you really asking that?”  But it reminded him of just earlier that day, when he’d wished Aqua would kill him.  Staying alive _was_ important.  It was pretty much the only thing he could count on to stay constant: he would fight for his life, until he couldn’t fight anymore.  Whether that was against Heartless, the Voice, or even his own Unversed.

He turned to leave Aqua, guessing that she would disappear as Terra had.  When he did so, he nearly jumped out of his boots.

“What do you want out of life?”  Ventus asked, his stupid _I’m-a-heart-of-light-and-I-love-everyone_ grin plastered on his face.

“I want—I want—” His throat constricted, choking off his words.  His eyes stung.  A silent shudder passed through him.

He fell to his knees and sobbed.

He was _so tired_ of crying, of feeling like an idiot, but it didn’t matter.  Emotion coming out as water on his face was much better than Unversed bursting from his skin.  After a moment of indecision, he threw off his helmet.  Ventus was just an illusion, and he needed to gasp in some fresh air and let the tears drip off his chin.

Unlike the other illusions, Ventus knelt down across from him.  “Vanitas… Van.”

His head jerked up, silencing his crying for a moment.  “Don’t – don’t call me that.”

Ventus frowned, like a puppy who had just been chastised for eating a couch cushion.  “I’m sorry.  Your heart told me it might make you feel better.”

“You mean Conscience?”  He snorted.  It didn’t have the right effect with snot clogging up his nose.  “He’s a liar.  And you’re not even real.”

His other half didn’t respond to that, just knelt there, staring at him with pity in his big blue eyes.  _Pity._

“Don’t look at me like that!”  He shouted, covering his eyes.  “I should be the one pitying _you!_ You’re the pathetic loser who—who—”

Who was a part of him.  Who had rejected him.  Who had given him a taste of the light, and then stolen it away again.

He sobbed again, nearly choking in surprise when he felt Ventus’s arms around him.  He was just as surprised to find himself hugging back.  His tears flowed onto Ventus’s shoulder, soaking into the white fabric of his short jacket.

“Vanitas… I didn’t know you…”

“Know what about me?”  He intended it as a snap, but it came out flat, deflated.  “That I have _feelings?”_

“Well… yeah.”

Somehow the honesty, mixed with a bit of sheepishness, made him laugh.  “Idiot.  I told you my Unversed were emotions.”  Why was he talking to illusion-Ventus like he would know that?  It didn’t matter, Ventus was Ventus, when it came to Vanitas.

“Yeah, right before we killed each other.”  He stated it simply, without accusation.

“Fair point,” Vanitas conceded, squirming a little.  “Why… why aren’t you trying to kill me now?”  He could have asked himself the same question, but he’d had enough introspection already.

“Your heart called out to me.”

“Are you… not an illusion?”  He’d already talked like he wasn’t, but it only sunk in now.  “How did you get in my heart?!”

Unless… maybe he never left?  That would definitely explain some of the light-shenanigans going on.

“Your heart called out to me,” Ventus repeated.  “I’m sleeping… somewhere, in the Realm of Light.  In… someone’s heart, I think.”

“But how did you get _here?”_

Ventus shrugged, which felt weird with him still hugging him.  “I don’t know.  I haven’t even been awake in a long time, I think.”

“How long?”

He shrugged again.  Maybe time passed weird there too, just like in the Realm of Darkness.  Or maybe Ventus was just really good at sleeping.

“So you made it to my heart.  What are you supposed to do here?  Puke up rainbows?  Try to convince me that light’s the best?  ‘Cause Aqua beat you to it.”

“Aqua?”  He perked up, pulling away enough to see Vanitas’s still-wet face.  “Wait, she’s in the _Realm of Darkness?_ With _you?”_

He winced.  Shouldn’t have brought that one up.  “…It’s a long story.”

“Is she okay!?”

“I asked you a question first.  What are you doing here?”

Those blue eyes became chips of ice.  “If you hurt her—”

“She’s _fine.”_ If his Unversed hadn’t gotten to her, anyway, but he doubted it.  “She saved your idiot friend Terra, trapped herself here instead of him.  I didn’t get a choice.”

Ventus still looked defensive – as he should.  “…You better take care of her, then.”  He grimaced as he said it.  “Ngh, I can’t believe I’m saying that…”

“Hey, I’ve done a freaking _awesome_ job of taking care of her.  Unlike you.”

That cut Ventus, he could tell, but he shook his head slowly.  “I’m not here to argue.  I’m here to help you.”

“Why?”  Vanitas demanded, the shock and joy of seeing his other half worn off just enough for the anger to surface.  “Why now, when you never wanted anything to do with me!  You _left_ me, Ventus!  We were going to be _whole again_ but nooooo, you had to kill us both instead!”

“Hey!  _You_ were the one trying to kill my friends—”

“I didn’t have a choice!  It was the only way you would fight!”

“Because I didn’t want to forge the X-Blade and plunge the Worlds into another Keyblade War!”

“It was the only way to be whole!  Do you have _any idea_ how it felt to be broken—!”

“I do!  I just didn’t take it out on everyone else!”

“Well you always were the light half!  I didn’t even know _how_ to be happy—”

“That doesn’t mean you can hurt whoever you want!”

“You hurt me first!”

“I didn’t even know you _existed!”_

_“Aaaagggghhh!”_ Vanitas shouted, tackling his other half, who was unprepared for the attack.  They wrestled for a few minutes, rolling and pinning each other, slipping away and trading positions.  Then Ventus finally went limp under Vanitas’s grip, pinned to the ground by Vanitas kneeling on his chest.  Those blue eyes burned like the center of a fire.

“What do you want out of life, Vanitas?  Huh?  Is this it?”  His breaths heaved raggedly.  “You just want to push away everyone who cares about you?”

“You don’t care about me!”  Vanitas shoved down on his arms, blowing out a plume of dust.

“Yeah?  Well then why am I here, _idiot_?  I didn’t have to come!”

Vanitas growled.  _Ventus_ was the idiot, not him.  He should just kill him, right there.  Finish what should’ve happened when they merged.  But…  “You came back,” he finally realized, grip loosening.  “You came back… why?”

“Because.”  Ventus shrugged.  “You’re a part of me… always will be.”

“You hate that, don’t you.”  Vanitas noticed the slight crease to his other half’s brow.

Another shrug.  Maybe sleeping for so long had given him a bit of apathy.  “I can’t say I like you.  But you don’t like me, so I guess we’re even.”

“But you came back anyway.”  Vanitas couldn’t put it together.  It was like trying to fit a square keyblade in a round hole.

Ventus nodded, his hair brushing around in the dust.  “It was the right thing to do.  You needed help.  You’re still human.”

He recoiled, pushing back to his knees.  “That’s what Conscience said.” Wait.  “Are you my conscience?”

Ventus grinned, sitting up.  “Maybe.  Maybe not.”

“That’s a stupid answer.”  He rolled his eyes.  “I guess it doesn’t matter.”

“Either way, you still have to answer my question.”

He nodded; he’d known it would come back to this eventually.  Even though it was almost the same as Aqua’s he’d thought of an original answer already.

“What do you want out of life?”

He didn’t know if it was possible.  If it was too high a goal, or too low, or just stupid.  But aside from staying alive, it was all he really wanted.

“I want to be happy.”

Ventus’s face lit up at that.  Cheesy grin, sparkling blue eyes.  He seized Vanitas in a bone-crushing hug.  “That’s all I want for you too, Vani.  Y’know, as long as you being happy doesn’t involve killing people.”

“Ugh, maybe just killing you…”  But he let himself be embraced.

And he even smiled.

After a long moment, Ventus cleared his throat.  “Vanitas… I have to go now.”

His heart plummeted down to his boots.  “Again?  I thought… this time, since you’re just sleeping in a heart anyway…”  He’d finally felt happy, whole, for just a second.  Of course that couldn’t last.

“We’ll always be connected,” Ventus replied, squeezing tighter.  If that was even possible.  “But you have a little of your own light now.  It looks like you’ve connected with… someone else.  If I stayed here, you could be seriously messed up.”

“Too late for that now,” he muttered.  His own light… confirmed by the expert on light himself.  As if the bright Bruiser hadn’t been enough.

But his light was his own.  Ventus wasn’t taking him over; he wasn’t being destroyed.  Maybe… maybe he could live with that.

“Ventus?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re not so much of an idiot after all.”

“Heh.  You’re not too bad yourself.”  Ventus pulled away enough to show his smile.  And then… Light.  Little orbs of it, like white HP orbs, floated off of his skin.  “See ya later, Vanitas.”

He felt his skin tingle as Ventus’s arms turned to motes of light, then the rest of him.  Like clumps of stars floating into the clear blue sky.

Vanitas wiped a tear from his eye.

“Heh… See ya…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bet you didn’t see THAT one coming.  (Neither did I, actually.  XD)  Vanitas just decided he needed to sort out his life with his other half before he’ll move on with the plot and stop freaking out so much.
> 
> Much as I love Aqua/Van banter, it was refreshing to write him insulting some other people for once, especially since Aqua and Van are friends now and he’ll probably be at least a little nicer to her.  But then again, you never really know with Van.
> 
> Next chapter should involve PLOT ACTION GO!  But I’ll be working on my original story for a while before that, so bear with me!


	15. Taming Light

Vanitas woke up alone.  As far as he could tell, he hadn’t been moved; he lay at the epicenter of a magical explosion.  Scorch marks marred the walls.  Chunks of ice crusted the ceiling and ground, barely beginning to drip water onto his unmasked forehead.  The sand surrounding him had been blown away, leaving a circle of bare greyish stone.

He stood and stretched, feeling strangely refreshed.  Maybe that had been one last gift from Ventus.  Though he had no evidence that the surreal dream had actually happened, he chose to believe it.  Darkness, he _wanted_ to believe it.  Anything to believe he could be whole.

He glanced around, inspecting the tunnel.  Something was missing.

“Aqua?”  He called. 

His voice echoed ominously, and then, silence.

 “Aqua?”  He tried again.  “If this is about what I said, I didn’t mean it.”

 _Mean it, mean it,_ the echo returned.  But still no answer.

He sighed heavily.  She’d probably just gotten her tender feelings hurt.  At least, he _hoped_ her feelings were all that was hurt…  She was strong; she could take care of herself.  But she had been sick recently.  He desperately hoped something hadn’t attacked her, but what other option was there?  She had too much light in her to take off and leave him, didn’t she?

He took a deep whiff of the stale air, but other than a normal musty scent, his nose picked up nothing.  That could mean a few different things.  One, the stupid underground was blocking his sense of smell.  Two, Aqua had actually left him and found a way above already.  That seemed unlikely.  Three, his nose was just plain not working, probably because of his recent influx of light.

He pushed away possibility four: Aqua was dead.  No.  If Vanitas couldn’t kill her, no one could.

“Aqua!”  He called again, though he knew by now it wouldn’t help.  Without her, he was lost for sure.  No Wayfinder, no sense of smell, and he didn’t want to calculate his odds of surviving if the evil wind returned.

He had to find her; there was no question about that.  But how?

He paced the diameter of the sand-free circle.  He could pick a direction and start walking, but that only gave him a fifty-fifty shot at best.  Even if he made some kind of mark on the walls with his keyblade at each intersection so he didn’t get lost, there would be too many directions to explore.  He could never search them all, especially if she was still moving.  But maybe if she _was_ moving, she’d run into some of his marks.  It was a long shot, but better than doing nothing.

First though, he would scan both directions of this branch of the tunnel.  She should have heard him within that distance, but he had to check.

Void Gear in hand, he chose the left side of the tunel at random and took off at a jog.

Maybe he didn’t really expect to find her so easily, but his heart still dropped when he reached a branching chamber with no sight of Aqua.  He dashed back the other way, scattering sand as he passed through the circle of destruction, and eventually skidded to a stop at another domed room.

He scratched a design on the wall, a simplified version of his Unversed symbol.  Aqua would recognize that, if she found her way back here somehow.

 _Somehow_ was right.  Now that he was actually attempting his plan, he just felt like an idiot.  Aqua wouldn’t have simply wandered off and gotten lost; she had either purposely abandoned him, or she was in danger.  Neither option was comforting.  Both required that he act fast, faster than he could while playing a random game of chance.

He dismissed Void Gear and leaned against the wall on his palms, elbows locked straight.  His head drooped.  The burst of energy he’d had upon waking up finally flickered out.

“Aqua… stop scaring me…”  The Fear wanted out.  He couldn’t do that again.  If his Unversed had hurt Aqua, or scared her away, he might _never_ make them again.  “This is all my fault, isn’t it?  If I had just been stronger…”

If he had just been able to control himself, none of this would have happened.  Sure, he knew he could be whole now, but so what?  Without Aqua… who was he?

Ventus had told Vanitas that he’d connected with someone else.  Who could that be but Aqua?

There _had_ to be a way to find her.  He desperately sniffed again, but if anything, the air just smelled dirtier.  Pounding his fist against the wall, he shoved himself upright.

The Unversed symbol carved on the wall taunted him.  A spectrum of fledgling emotions at his “control,” and what good did it do him?  None of them could help him find Aqua… or could they?  His light Bruiser had wanted to protect her.  Maybe that meant it could track her down?

“Or, they could start trying to kill me again,” he growled.  But he had to try, didn’t he?  “Can’t believe I’m actually going to do this…”

He took a few deep breaths.  In, out, in, out.  If he was going to create Unversed, it was going to be on _his_ terms, not because Fear or Panic or Despair overwhelmed him.

When he was calm enough to keep his hands from shaking, he reached down to his emotions.  Under that Fear, Panic, and Despair – or maybe entwined with them – was that desire to find and protect Aqua.  He wove it free and gently pulled it to the surface.

White mist began to pool in his palms.  Swirling, solidifying.  He held his breath as the misty tendrils joined together in front of him, drawing out more and more of his emotion, until a white Unversed stood face-to-face with him.  A Bruiser, just like before, though he realized the name didn’t fit anymore.

Vanitas smirked as a new name for the Unversed came to him.  “Alright, Protector.  Take me to Aqua.”

XXX

Vanitas rode clinging to the Protector’s back.  Not only would carrying him it its arms slow its run, he also really didn’t want to be toted like a princess again.  Especially not when they found Aqua.

How far could she have gone?  The Protector, like regular Bruisers, wasn’t incredibly fast.  If only his emotions could’ve spawned a Glidewinder.  He had no idea what positive emotions would create a light version of the racing Unversed.  That might not be a bad idea to try later, though…

Suddenly the Protector stopped; Vanitas wrapped his arms tighter around its stubby neck.  A wave of nausea overwhelmed him even before he observed the room.  They had arrived in a chamber with sand-dripping stalactites, not much different from the many others that they had traveled through –

Except for the dark fog swirling in the center of the room.

Vanitas dropped from the Protector’s back as it charged the dark mist.  He would recognize that gutter-gunk smell anywhere.  The stench overpowered him, mold and death clogging his lungs.  He summoned Void Gear as a support, stabbing it point-down into the sand as he swayed.  What else was he supposed to do with the weapon?  Run straight at the darkness, like the Protector had?

_“Ah, there he isssss.  We told you you would sssee usssss.”_

The voice injected ice into his blood.  The wind picked up, circling the room like a funnel cloud.  Vanitas threw up his arm to block sand from pelting his eyes.

“Shut… up!”  He said through gritted teeth.  The voice was back.  He’d known it would be, sooner or later.  That knowledge didn’t quash the Terror flaring inside him.  “What have you done with Aqua?!”

 _“Sssuch ssstrong feelingssss.  Yesss, your heart will do nisssscely.”_ The black smoke gusted towards him.  He barely dispersed it with a hasty Aero.  Then, while he still had a chance, he summoned his mask.  The stench immediately lessened; he no longer felt that his nose was stuck in a rusty sewer drain.

Unfortunately, with the darkness of the mist combined with the already-dim tunnel, he could now barely see.  He summoned a Yellow Mustard without thinking. 

It streaked directly into the center of the fog.  Where his Protector had gone.

He cursed his stupidity, yanking Void Gear from the ground and casting Aeroga.  He had put it in his command deck in case the voice came back, and thanked the Void for it.

His wind spell scattered sand and black smoke away from him, and he used the opportunity to chase after the Yellow Mustard.  He managed to slash his blade through it before the smoke billowed back, cutting off his route of escape.

_“You try to fight.  Thisss isss noble, but ussselesss.  You have already lossst.”_

“Not while I’m still alive,” he growled.  Aeroga was taking too long to reload; he unleashed a Dark Thundaga.  It did nothing to the smoke, though it fused the sand in front of him into glass.

_“Ussselessss.  You will sssssee.”_

He didn’t see.  He didn’t see anything; darkness stole his sight.  Even his mask couldn’t keep the stench out now.  It burned his lungs like acid.  Still, he held his keyblade bared, searching for an escape.

There – a speck of light.  He dashed for it, but felt as if he were running through thick water.  The smoke condensed around him, holding him in place.

“No – no!”  He cried out.  The sand began sucking at his boots, like when they had fallen into this nightmare in the first place.  When he looked down, he could barely see that it wasn’t sand, but a liquid pool of darkness.  He struggled against it, swiped through it with his blade, shot a few Dark Blizzagas.  All attempts were vain.

Vanitas finally came to a decision:  he was sick of darkness.

As he began to sink, the light burst free of the mist.  It was his Protector, and even better –Aqua was slung over its shoulder.

The white Unversed tugged him free of the dark pool, which finally released him with a sucking noise, then tossed him over its other shoulder.  The wind fought the Protector in a fierce tug-of-war, trying to gust his body free, but the Unversed held firm.  Though it wasn’t fast, its bulky frame pushed through the dense fog with determination.

_“Yesss, sssuch a sssstrong heart…”_

From over the Protector’s shoulder, Vanitas gripped Void Gear in both hands and summoned the strongest Aeroga he possibly could.  Wind exploded from the tip of his keyblade.  He took a deep gasp of the fresh air as the acrid mist was forced back down an opposite tunnel.  Still, as the Protector carried them to safety, the voice’s hiss echoed in Vanitas’s ears.

_“You have already losssssst…”_

XXX

Vanitas and Aqua both awoke gagging and coughing up smoke.  He threw off his helmet and wretched on hands and knees, while she barely had the strength to roll onto her side.  The Protector sat watching over them; Vanitas couldn’t decide if that was comforting or creepy.  He didn’t absorb the Unversed, though.  They might need its help again soon.

He almost though the voice was back, just because of the sheer amount of smoke they coughed out.  Eventually their lungs cleared, and the moldy smell dissolved into the usual underground mustiness.

“Van!”  Aqua finally managed to exclaim between fading coughs.  “You – you found me!”

“Barely,” he grumbled, resting back on his knees.  “You’re welcome.”

“But I thought…”  Darkness flashed over her eyes.  “You gave up on me.  You forced me away.”  He wished he had an excuse for what he’d said and done, but he didn’t.  Not one that didn’t make him look either hateful or pathetic, anyway.  So he tried something new.  Something Ventus would have approved of.

“I didn’t mean to, Aqua…” He turned away before adding in a whisper, “I’m… sorry.” 

His wind-ruffled spikes of hair fell over his eyes as if to take the place of his mask, but he heard her shift behind him.  Still too weak to walk, he guessed.  “What… what did you say?”

He clenched his jaw.  Wasn’t saying it once enough?  Surely she’d heard.  She just wanted to drag it out of him again.

“What are you looking at?”  He muttered at the Protector, which had turned to stare at him.  The Unversed’s blue eyes narrowed, and he sighed heavily.  “Ugh, fine.  Next thing I know you’ll be talking to me too.  Then we’ll have some real problems…”

“Uh, Van?  Are you okay?”

He shook his head.  “I hope so.  Anyway, as I was saying…”  He turned towards her; after all, he wouldn’t want to miss the look on her face.  “Aqua… I’m sorry.”

Sure enough, her expression was priceless, even lying on her side as she was.  Her face scrunched in utter confusion, slowly softened to wide-eyed realization, and finally was topped off with a small but genuine smile.

“Van… I didn’t realize you knew those words.”

“Huh—?  Hey!”  His face reddened; he quickly looked away.  “I was trying to be _sincere_ for once! Don’t throw my sarcasm back at me!”

“Who said I was being sarcastic?”  She replied innocently, though her eyes held a mischievous twinkle.  “Besides, if you own sarcasm, then I get exclusive rights to sincerity.  I believe that’s a fair trade.”

“Whatever.  Don’t expect any more apologies from me.”  He crossed his arms.  Aqua laughed lightly, slowly pushing herself into a sitting position.

“You know I’m only teasing.  And I…”  She took a deep breath, then met his eyes.  “I forgive you.”

The words carried weight, as if each was solid.  Powerful.  She meant more than that she forgave him for the hurtful comment before his Unversed went haywire.  He could tell even before she added the words, “For everything.”

He had never acknowledged the weight on his shoulders until that moment, when it gently faded away.  So _this_ was why people apologized.  It was as if he had just escaped a Gravity spell; he could have floated.

“Th-thank you,” he stuttered, feeling a foreign Unversed begin to form.  A light one, he could tell.  His curiosity tempted him to let it come, and he indulged it.

The white tendrils formed a Mandrake this time.  Though Mandrakes always had some cream-colored sections, it was the green part that now shone white, while its formerly white face became a pale pink.  A Mandrake made sense; he often formed its negative counterparts from Guilt or Regret.  This one was born of a special kind of Relief – the Relief of being forgiven.

Aqua gasped, but didn’t move.  The glowing Mandrake – hm, that would be harder to rename than the Bruiser had been – made no attempt to attack.

“It’s okay,” Vanitas said quietly, as if he would somehow startle the new Unversed.  “I let this one out on purpose.  I can control them now.”

Aqua peered closer, and the Mandrake waved its leaf-like appendages happily.  “How did you learn to do this?”

“It’s kind of a long story.”  He didn’t want to tell her about his experience inside his heart.  No need to make her question his sanity further.  “The light ones are made of positive emotions.  That’s why they fought – the positive and negative Unversed don’t mix.  As long as I don’t make both kinds at the same time, they obey me.”

“Does this mean no more Unversed attacks?”

He winced.  “Yeah.  I think so.”  He hoped so, anyway.  It would take conscious care not to mix his Unversed of negativity and Unversed of positivity.  ‘Unversed’ seemed a weird name now for the light creatures; maybe he would give the whole group a new name.  That would be easier than renaming each individual species.

“Good.”  She nodded.  “That was why I had to leave in the first place, you know.  Your Unversed attacked me, and then that… that mist chased me from there.”  She shuddered, wrapping herself in her arms.  “I would have been fast enough, but it cut me off from two different directions in that chamber.”

So, basically it all boiled down to Vanitas’s fault.  What else was new?  But he’d apologized.  And also saved her life, again.  That counted for something.

“Speaking of that, we really need to get out of here,” Aqua said.  Vanitas nodded his agreement and cast Cure over her.  “Thanks.  Now, I’m not sure I can do much, but maybe I can power the Wayfinder a little…”

She unlooped the star charm from her belt and cupped it in her palms.  Concentration scrunched her face, but only a couple weak sparks appeared to show for it.

“It’s okay,” he said, though Stress and Concern wanted to peak through.  He wouldn’t allow that, but it was understandable.  They couldn’t pretend the voice wouldn’t find them again.  He could only guess at how much time they had.  “Can I give it a try?”

“Um… I don’t see why not,” she said, though she seemed reluctant to pass her most prized possession into his hands.  The light Mandrake peered at it curiously, and the Protector ambled over to join it.  Aqua frowned at the Unversed.  It _was_ getting a little crowded in their narrow tunnel.  Vanitas stretched out his hand and absorbed the two, feeling warmth reenter his heart.  What a strange, wonderful feeling.

He clutched the blue charm, closing his eyes and focusing on that warmth.  Pulling on it, creating a white tendril and feeding it into the Wayfinder.  But the charm resisted.  The tendril tapped on its glass surface, but none of the magic made it through.

Vanitas frowned, pulling back his magic and handing the Wayfinder to Aqua.  “It was worth a shot, I guess.”

“It’s what I expected.  It’s powered by my personal connection to Terra and Ven.  I don’t think anyone else could work it.”

“Figures,” he muttered, eyeing the charm enviously.  “Well, if that option’s no good, maybe one of my Inversed could find us a way out.”

Aqua raised an eyebrow.  “Inversed?”

“It’s what I decided to call my light Unversed.”

“Since when?”

“Since now.”  The name had just come out of his mouth and fit, the way all the best names did.  “Alright, time for something awesome.”

What emotion would be most likely to get them out of here?  Fear of the dark mist was a solid option, or it would’ve been, if his Unversed of Fear weren’t known for being stupid and attacking whatever came near.  Regular Unversed were pretty chaotic in general.  Probably would be better to use an Inversed, which meant he needed positivity.  He tried to channel it – the longing for green grass, blue skies, a warm sun.  Nostalgia could likely lead them out, if anything could.  But the emotion wouldn’t quite come; it was too tangled in the Fear and Jealousy over the Wayfinder, and the basic desire to one-up Aqua and prove himself useful.  The white mist that had barely begun to form fizzled out.

Aqua stifled a laugh.  Alright, maybe he shouldn’t have set her expectations so high.  He flushed in embarrassment, an emotion he certainly didn’t want to take form.

“It’s okay, Van.  This has been tough on both of us.  We need time to regain our strength.”

He nodded reluctantly.  Time wasn’t something they had, but neither did they have more options.  “Go to sleep.  I’ll keep watch first.”

She accepted without hesitation, lying back down in the sand.  It was a testament to her exhaustion that she began to snore almost immediately.

Vanitas was far too restless.  And too terrified.  He was sure the dark wind could have followed them in spite of his Aeroga.  It seemed too intelligent for them to have simply outrun it.  But why would it let them escape?  It was like some sadistic game.  Vanitas would know; he was an expert on sadistic games.

 _Why did I let Aqua and Ventus go, when we were in the Realm of Light?_ Of course, they had beaten him a few times, but there were other times he’d had a choice.  Like when he’d chosen to leave Aqua unconscious in Neverland, rather than killing her.  _Because I wanted them to get stronger.  And because I wanted to see what they would do.  Because I had more planned for them than simply killing them…_

The thought chilled Vanitas to the bone.  However the evil voice intended to use them, he wished to both the Darkness and Light that he wouldn’t find out.

He cast a small floating Fire, wishing he had the skill for a larger one, like Aqua did.  Too much of the corridor remained in shadow, where smoke could lurk unseen.  He tried to summon a happy feeling, any happy feeling, for an Inversed companion.  No such luck.  He finally settled for a Red Hot Chili from his Dread, but its bouncing flickers only cast eerie shapes across the walls.  He eliminated it with a gust of Aero, not wanting to wake Aqua with Thunder.  His skin prickled at the return of negativity.  And even worse, his mounting despair for the fate.

It was going to be a long, long night.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts on travel via Unversed came from The Unplanner, and the idea to name the light Unversed “Inversed” came from The Mighty Gyarapie.  Thank you for your input, as well as to everyone else who reviewed!  It really means a lot to me!  (And is what helps me stay motivated to finish chapters faster.  XD )
> 
> To answer a couple of people, this story will not include BbS 0.2, as I recently added to the story summary.  As I was a missionary for a year, I missed all of the news and release of KH2.8, and I don’t have a console to play it, nor do I really have the time now to catch up on all of the cutscenes (though I probably will eventually).  Anyway, since I already had planned where this story was going, it would take a lot of plot fanangling to get it to match up with that, and it would probably result in this story itself being less good.  Sorry about that, I guess I’m just an old fart who likes to live in the past.  :P  It’s probably my own fault for not finishing this like 3 years ago lol.
> 
> I’ll be on vacation for the next two weeks, so probably no updates then, though I might draft a chapter or so on paper.  (I always do my first drafts on paper and then type them, anyway).  I wanted a few things planned for the next chapter to happen in this one, but this ended up longer than I expected and I didn’t want to squish it all together.  Anyway, I’m excited to write the next chapter, so it should be here soon after I get back!  C:


	16. Marshmallows

In spite of Vanitas’s fears, they avoided any more encounters with the Dark Wind for the following days – at least, any encounters he could certify were real.  It could have been a frenzied imagination, but every time they turned a corner he swore he saw it in the edges of his eyes, tasted it in the back of his throat, felt it tingling his neck.  Aqua tried to assure him that it was fine, that the darkness was just playing tricks on him.  Those assurances felt hollow when she had that same haunted gleam in her eyes.

At least she had the strength now to power the Wayfinder.  Her magic could fuel it for nearly as long as their legs could stand to walk, and then they would sleep in shifts.  Walking.  Sleeping.  Watching.  The days, the tunnels, the sand, all blended together.  He tried to mix it up and practice creating Inversed, at least during his turns on watch, but positivity was hard to come by.  Even the tiny Floods eluded him.

As for Aqua… well, at least she hadn’t fallen sick again, but the exhaustion would catch up to her soon.  Sheer force of will seemed to be the only thing propelling her anymore.  And hope, he supposed, but that hope drained like the sprinkling sand every new day they woke up in the dark tunnels.

Until today.

“We _have_ to be getting close,” she muttered to herself, staring at the ceiling as they walked.  In the glow of the Wayfinder’s trail, he could barely pick out some twisting lines that protruded from the stone.  Vines, he would think, if it weren’t the Realm of Darkness.  How could any plant survive her?  He didn’t care, really, so long as they actually _were_ getting close.  Aqua had muttered the same thing over and over today, as the ground sloped upward, as their path followed this isolated tunnel, as the sand grew sparse and disappeared.

Maybe, just maybe, they actually were getting close.  True to her word, Aqua had been counting the days since she had claimed Vanitas’s friendship.  Today was day seventeen.  At least seventeen cycles of sleeping and waking in these Heartless-forsaken tunnels.  Over half of those spent feeling stalked like prey by the Dark Wind.  Even ignoring everything else, that alone was enough to threaten his sanity yet again.

“We have to—”  Aqua stopped short, and Vanitas paused beside her.  They summoned their keyblades in unison, though he wasn’t sure what good it would do.  Their enemy way a small puddle of darkness that blocked their path.

_It’s the mist, the voice, it’s going to pull me under again, and I don’t have a Protector this time—_

But it wasn’t the wind.  He could smell that much.

He had never felt so relieved in his life as when a plain Shadow Heartless burst from the puddle.

“What…”  Aqua stared, keyblade arm limp, before falling to her knees and laughing.  Vanitas was so stunned he nearly did the same, but he forced himself to slice the Shadow into oblivion first.  By then, Aqua’s laughter had escalated to hysterical cackles, the kind that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

“Uh… Aqua?  I know you’re excited to see something normal again, but you’re kiiiind of freaking me out.”

“Come on!”  She leapt up, ignoring his worry and dragging him by the arm up the tunnel.  He was forced to stumble along behind, swinging Void Gear awkwardly at the Shadows that continued to pop up.  “We’re almost there!  I know it!”

She sped up, dragging him so he tripped to his knees.  “Aqua!  Seriously!  I have legs, I know how to run— wait wait wait, is that a wall?  I don’t care how magic you are, you can’t run through a—!”

Apparently, she could.  And she did.

To be fair, the wall was made of twisted, withered black vines.  The kind that weren’t incredibly solid, but _were_ incredibly scratchy.  Vanitas didn’t summon his mask in time, and while his suit protected the rest of his body, his face felt like it was being blasted with wood shavings.

They tumbled out on the other side, collapsing in a vine-tangled heap on the stone ground.

“Nngh…” he moaned.  Aqua scrambled to untangle herself, hastily checking her Wayfinder.  Its light had winked out, but it was otherwise unharmed.  She sighed in relief.

Vanitas saw something even more relieving.  Lying on his back, entangled in vines, he could stare up and see dead tree branches criss-crossing the black expanse of sky.  The empty, bleak abyss of sky.

In the moment, nothing had ever seemed so beautiful.

“Wow,” Aqua said, staring up with him.  “I never thought I’d be glad to see such darkness.”

“Guess it’s all about perspective.”  He put his hands behind his head and took his first deep breath of aboveground air.  Of course, it was still the Realm of Darkness; he didn’t expect the smell to improve drastically.

His heart fell as he realized no additional scents of light filled his nose.  It had been a feeble hope anyway; if his senses still worked, the Wayfinder should have smelled stronger. Its light had smelled fuzzy, like he’d had cotton balls stuffed up his nose.  Apparently he would have to accept that as the new normal.

“I almost thought… in spite of what I said… that we’d never make it,” Aqua said softly, lying back down.

“You?  Lose hope?”  He snorted.  “This place’d start sprouting rainbows before that would happen.”

“You’d be surprised,” she murmured.  She _had_ been close to giving up when he first met her in this realm… but that felt so long ago.  He cracked an eye, squinting at her forlorn expression.

“Hey.  We made it.  You’re supposed to be happy.”

“I know…”

He heaved himself up on one elbow.  “Spit it out.  Your face isn’t made for moping.”

Her lips parted, almost like she was going to laugh but forgot how halfway through.  “Coming from you, Van, that might be a compliment.”

“It’s not.  It’s a fact.  Now that idiot Terra, _he’s_ got a face fit for moping.  But that’s not that point.  What’s going on?”

She grimaced, like the tunnels had left a bad taste in her mouth.  Which seemed plausible enough.  “I don’t know.  I guess I’m just… still afraid.  And I’d fooled myself, just for a moment, that when we came out…” She paused, until Vanitas raised an eyebrow.  Then she sighed.  “…That the sky would be blue.”

He opened his mouth for to ask her what in the worlds would have given her that idea, but stopped himself.  Barely.  She _had_ been overpowered by the Dark Wind twice now.  She may not have Unversed springing out of her to show it, but that didn’t make her less afraid.  Maybe even scarred.  The Void knew he was.

Still, he wasn’t about to let them wallow in it.  Not when things were finally going right.

He jumped to his feet – stumbled really, stupid vines – and pulled Aqua up with him.

“Van, what-?”

“You want a blue sky?  Well then _make yourself_ a dang blue sky!”

He stood there grinning, like a specter of the night.  She just blinked.  Like that wasn’t the best two-sentence motivational speech the worlds had ever known.

“That wasn’t a metaphor,” he added, in case she was just confused.  “You’re the expert on magic, can’t you _literally_ make the sky look blue?”  Sure, there was no ‘Coloraga’ spell, but most light- and dark-based magic, like her spell with the Wayfinder or his crafting a dark suit, was based more on instinct than knowledge.

“I highly doubt it’s that simple…” she trailed off, blinking up at the void.

“Have you ever tried?”

“Well… something similar, yes.”  Her cheeks reddened.

“Oh.”  He paused.  “Don’t look so embarrassed.  I guess even you can’t get magic right every time.”

“I did get it right,” she replied quietly, face still pink.

Then why was she looking like that?  He’d seen Aqua angry, frightened, exhausted, and even happy, but he couldn’t remember her being embarrassed.  The closest was when he’d thought she was hiding food in her chest, but that had been more of a disgust mixed with fury.

“It’s been a very long time,” she decided to explain, after pausing to loop her Wayfinder back around her belt.  “Small manipulation of color was actually the first magic I ever discovered.  Even before I learned to summon my keyblade.”

“Why would Eraqus teach you _that?”_ Well, colors were pretty safe; probably not every master threw his apprentice head-first into dangerous combat magic.

“He didn’t.  It was before he ever found me...  It was _how_ he found me.”

Vanitas crossed his arms.  “You don’t have to pause for dramatic effect, Aqua.”  He was curious; he’d like her to finish before too many Heartless showed up.  Surprisingly, the clearing in this thicket of skeletal trees was empty.  He’d thought for sure that with the few in the tunnel, they would find more up here.

She smiled a little.  “I turned my hair blue.”

“You—you _what?”_ A Yellow Mustard Unversed popped out in surprise.

She laughed at his hanging jaw.  “I suppose you weren’t expecting that.”

“You’re kidding, right?”  He shot a little burst of Blizzard at the Unversed without looking, destroying it.

“No, I really turned my hair blue.”  The pink finally faded from her face.  “My mother thought I had some sort of disease.  When the Master passed through our town, she asked him to heal me.  That was how he found out I was a keyblade wielder.”

“But _why?”_ He asked.  “And what did it look like before?”

She reached up to finger a lock self-consciously.  “I was young.  Blue was my favorite color.  Before I knew I was a keyblade wielder, I was just like everyone else, and I wanted to be different.  To stand out somehow.  My subconscious must have decided this was the way.”

“…That’s pretty weird,” Vanitas decided.  She grimaced, probably about to say something in defense, but he continued.  “But I get it.”

“You do?”  She blinked.

“Yeah,” he realized.  “You didn’t want to be like all the other boring idiots.”  And she’d done it without even knowing how.  That was pretty impressive.

“It wasn’t _quite_ like… nevermind.”  She sighed and shook her head.  “The point is, I can do a little with color.  Mostly blue, and mostly basic things, such as learning how to make my accidental color spell permanent.  There weren’t many books on color magic in the Land of Departure; very few Masters spent enough time studying it to have much to say.”

They probably thought it was mostly useless, too.  Unless you just needed a way to boost morale in the middle of a light-forsaken wasteland.

“Well, you don’t need to make the sky blue now anyway.  You stopped moping, that’s what matters.”  He nodded decisively, settling the matter.

Aqua laughed.  “Before, you would have preferred me moping.  Do you realize how much you’ve changed, Van?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”  He frowned.  His Dive and the Inversed had made that clear.  “But I’ll deal with it.  Now come on, I want to get a little farther from those tunnels before we stop for the night.”

She nodded in agreement, and they summoned their keyblades and loped off into the forest.

XXX

Vanitas couldn’t help noticing something weird: there were still no Heartless.  Not one.  The bony black trees weren’t crowded too tightly to keep them out.

“So where are they?”  He mumbled to himself when they finally slowed in another clearing, this one covered by a snarl of dark branches far overhead.  Far enough to almost not remind him of the tunnels.  Almost.

“The Heartless?”  Aqua asked, and he nodded.  “I wondered the same thing.”

“Maybe they’re avoiding us,” he tried to come up with a non-terrifying possibility.  “We fought off the Dark Wind.  And we have our dark suits, so we don’t register to them unless you use light magic.”

“But we’d still see _some_ Heartless,” she insisted.  And she was right, he knew.  “This place just feels… dead.”

“At least we’re above ground.” 

He hacked a thick branch off of a tree with a few strikes of his keyblade, letting it crash to the ground.  Unfortunately, it was so long dead that it cracked in half on impact, so he picked another limb, catching it in his arms this time.  The log made a pretty good seat, despite creaking under his weight.  Aqua followed suit, then added a hovering Fira to their campsite.

“I guess it’s not so bad. Kind of like camping in the Land of Departure.”  She chuckled.  “Now we just need marshmallows.”

“Marshmallows…”  He stood with a start, reaching to his emotions.

“Van?”

“Shut up, I’m being awesome.”  He closed his eyes.  Concentrate.  Prize Pods were among the most difficult Unversed to create – but maybe they didn’t have to be Unversed.

Rather than remembering the hunger, the longing, he thought of when he and Aqua had last made ice cream.  The excitement, the salty-sweet flavor, the happiness.  Happiness he would feel again.

For the first time in weeks, a white form wisped from his outstretched palms.  Then another, and another, and another.  Four Prize Pod Inversed.  He prepared himself to chase them down, but they remained hovering over the fire like ghosts.

“Van… it’s incredible.”

He smirked.  “I know.”

The white Prize Pods still seemed a little skittish, so he approached them slowly.  He considered summoning his keyblade, but something about hitting these creatures formed of his happiness felt wrong.  It was stupid; they were a part of him, he had the right to do with them what he wanted.  Still, he carefully reached out to grab one, lifted its lid, and poured its contents on the ground.  It didn’t seem to mind, though it did flutter more nervously in his hands and then hid behind its companions when he let it go.

Vanitas kicked at the ingredients.  A few heart-shaped Chocolate Valentines, two tiny bottles of Crystal Soda, even a Wedding Cake.  None of which he was looking for.

While he coaxed the other Inversed into giving up their treats, Aqua gathered the ones he’d already dropped, stacking them neatly by her log.  After spilling out some Crystal Sugar, he finally found it.

“Marshmallows.”  He announced, absorbing the Prize Pods and collecting the bounty of Rich Marshmallows from the ground.  They weren’t wrapped; hopefully they hadn’t picked up any germs.

“That’s wonderful!”  Aqua smiled brightly, the most sincerely she had since the tunnels.  Vanitas found it contagious.  “I never found any marshmallows from your Unversed before.”

“They’re extra rare.”  He remembered roasting marshmallows as Ventus.  Memories and feelings best left unsaid.  He summoned Void Gear and stabbed a Rich Marshmallow.  “These won’t make you sick again, will they?  From germs on the ground?”

“Fire kills germs.  We should be safe.”  Worry briefly flashed over her face, though.  He wished he hadn’t mentioned it.

She summoned Master Keeper and picked out a marshmallow of her own.  “Thank you, Van.”

“No problem.  What are friends for besides magically creating food?”

She laughed at his joke.  It was only then that he realized he’d called them friends.  They were, obviously, or she would have killed him by now.  But there was still something special about saying it.  Maybe Ventus wasn’t so much of an idiot about that after all.

Aqua, of course, insisted they wash their hands first, and he didn’t argue.  Then they sat and roasted their marshmallows in warm, comfortable silence.  It was amazing how the addition something as small as marshmallows could turn their camp from eerie to homey.  Still, he avoided staring too deeply into the trees.

Aqua’s marshmallow was a soft golden brown when she pulled it from the flames.

“You can’t take it out yet, it’s not done.”  Vanitas frowned.

“Not all of us like our marshmallows on fire, Van.”  She chuckled, propping her keyblade upright against the log and unwrapping a Chocolate Valentine.

“Not on fire.  Just black,” he corrected.  “That’s the _right_ way to do it.”

“Ven always said the same thing.”  She smiled fondly, taking a second Valentine and sandwiching the Rich Marshmallow between them.

“Of course he did.  He learned it from me.”  He hid the bitterness from his voice.  How many times had Ventus gotten to roast marshmallows with Aqua?  Vanitas had spied on a few.  Even made them think there was a monster in the forest once.  Good times.

Once his marshmallow was in fact flaming, he held his keyblade close, sucked in a huge breath, and gave it a solid blow.

It plopped gracelessly on the ground.

Aqua laughed with her mouth full of makeshift s’more, which also happened to gracelessly spray marshmallow goop.  She promptly covered her mouth, eyes widening, but Vanitas was already cackling.  Cackling so hard, in fact, that he accidently fell backwards off of his log.  His yelp of surprise only made her nearly choke on her s’more.  She finally gulped it down as she knelt by him.

“You okay, Van?”  She giggled.

“Perfect,” he replied with a wide grin, a happy white Red Hot Chili popping free to prove it.  The name didn’t make as much sense for the monochrome Inversed; maybe he’d call it a White Hot Chili instead.  “Just perfect.”

She helped him up, and he speared another squishy treat, roasting it to just barely black this time rather than turning it into a charcoal brick.

“Hey, toss me a few of those Valentines.”

Aqua did, and he made a makeshift s’more like hers.  The Chocolate Valentines melted a little on his fingers.  He shoved the whole s’more in his mouth, then licked his fingers clean.  The explosion of sweet, fluffy flavors stayed on his tongue even while he knew the food itself would shortly disappear, returning to the emotions it was born from.

Perfect.  It really was.

“Who needs the stupid Realm of Light, huh?”  He grinned, mouth sticky with marshmallow goop.  “We’ve got everything we need right here.”

He expected Aqua to laugh, or smile, or something.  He didn’t expect her to freeze, then stare forlornly at her s’more.

“I mean, now that we don’t have to worry about the Wind,” he amended.  Maybe she was still scared of that.  He was, too, but a little fear might be worth it, if they could stay like this.  Ice cream.  S’mores.  Things that the Realm of Light had always placed out of reach, in a life that could’ve been his, but wasn’t.

“That’s not all,” Aqua said slowly, carefully.  “What about the sun?  And my friends…”

Vanitas shoved down a sigh.  Even when they were on different sides of the universe, Ventus and Terra could still get in the way.  “I’m your friend.”

“You are.  But Terra, and Ven… They still need me.”

He snorted.  “Ventus is asleep in someone else’s heart, and Terra might be just a Xehanort-filled husk by now.  What can you do for them?”

“I… I don’t know.”  Water glistened in the corner of her eye.  “But I have to try.”

Stubborn to the end.  He didn’t really expect her to agree that the Realm of Darkness could be okay, but it was worth a shot.

She didn’t seem to enjoy the rest of her s’more, though she did finish it.  More water dripped from her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he decided to apologize, since it had helped last time.  His tone was probably too flat, though.  How was he supposed to apologize for telling the truth?

“…It’s fine,” she mumbled, wiping her face dry with the back of her hand.  “I’m just… I’m so scared for them.  Do you know what that feels like?”

“Not really,” he admitted with a shrug.  The only other person he’d been scared for was her, and he’d been able to do something about it.  “I bet they’d say the same for you, though.  If they knew you were stuck down here, with me.”

“I do suppose I should be grateful. At least you _are_ here with me.  I don’t have to face this realm alone.” She smiled a little.  “Still, even if I weren’t worried about Terra and Ven, I would never want to stay here.  I would always have to look over my shoulder for Heartless, or who knows what else.  Besides, this place is completely unsanitary.”

He chuckled.  “Aqua, you can summon soap and water.  Why are you worried about that?”

“Well, for one, I haven’t had a shower in ages.”  She said matter-of-factly, though she blushed.

“Of course you haven’t.  It doesn’t rain here.  Could you make it rain?”

“Not _that_ kind of shower – wait, have _you_ ever had a shower?  Or a bath?”

He grinned at the look of utter disgust on her face.  It was nearly as bad as when she’d first met him here, only this time it was because of something way more stupid.

“I’ve had baths,” he said with a laugh. “I think they’re stupid, but Xehanort would get mad if I was too smelly.  So I’d find a river somewhere and scrub in it.”

She sighed in relief.  “Good. That’s one lesson I did _not_ want to have to teach you.” 

“I just can’t believe that’s what you’re most excited about when you get back.”

“I wouldn’t say I’m _most_ excited about that…” She stabbed another marshmallow and held it up to the flames.  “What about you?  What do you look forward to about going home?”

“Home?”  He frowned.  “I don’t have a home.  Unless you count a cave in the Keyblade Graveyard, which I don’t.”

“Okay, what do you look forward to in the Realm of Light, then?”

He burned another marshmallow while pondering her question.  What was there to look forward to?  He’d just been focusing on getting out of here.  Everything after that was just fantasy right now.  “Food I don’t have to make out of my emotions, I guess.  It helps that we don’t have to eat here, though.”  Stealing food for every meal got pretty exhausting.

“That’s true, considering we would be dead otherwise.”  She put together another s’more, this time experimenting with sprinkling a pinch of Crystal Sugar on top.

 “Trees,” he added, looking up at the interlocking branches.

“You miss trees?”  She asked.  He nodded, absently eating his marshmallow plain, right off the blade.

“Not these kind.  Live ones, with leaves.  Lots of shade.  Lots of branches to climb around and hide in.  I like trees.”

She looked at him as if expecting more, but that was it.  He just liked trees.  Just like she just liked blue skies.

Suddenly, he felt a jolt of pain.  Like – someone had killed an Unversed?  Strangely, he couldn’t feel an emotion returning, but what else could it be?  He _had_ accidentally spawned a White Hot Chili earlier.  He hadn’t paid attention to it; it must have flown off.

“What?”  Aqua asked, worried.  “Did you smell something?  Wait, can you smell again?”

“No.”  He shook it off.  “My sense of smell’s still dampened.  One of my Inversed just died.”

“So there are Heartless,” she deduced, relaxing.  He nodded.  Inversed would likely attract the creatures.  That punched some holes in his plan to have a Protector guard their camp tonight.

“We’ll be fine.  I just won’t summon any more unless we’re prepared to fight them.”

“There’s another problem, though.”  She frowned.  “If you still can’t smell, and Heartless are attracted to the light of my Wayfinder, how will we find our way out?”

“We’ll… figure something out.  We’re smart.”  He put on a fake smile.  Aqua had worried enough for both of them lately.  “For now, let’s get some sleep.”

“I’ll take first shift,” she volunteered.  He wasn’t sure they needed a watch now, but it was better to be safe.  He nodded and slid off of his log, punching it a few times until it crunched into a more pillow-like shape.  He slid just as easily into unconsciousness.

For the first time he could remember, he had pleasant dreams.  Strolling under the soft shade of summer trees.  Light, dappling the ground in little patches, just enough to warm his skin.  No dark suit, a shirt and shorts instead – something he would’ve worn when he and Ventus were one.

And Aqua was there.  They were in the Realm of Light, and she hadn’t left him.  She laughed at something he said, and they continued walking together.

And it was perfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out my FFN profile to vote on what you think Aqua’s original hair color would be! (Note that I won’t necessarily use the results in this fic, but I am curious what people think or would like.) That was a very random tidbit that I think a lot of people won’t like, but it just came out as I was writing and once it was there, it just felt right to me, I couldn’t bring myself to change it even though I think it’s strange. If you think about it, not too many original KH characters have super weird hair colors. Saïx is the only other one with really blue hair, I don’t count Zexion. Then we have Axel with flaming red, and Marly with pink, but everyone else has some shade that’s close to natural. (Larxene is probably pushing it, and I admit silver for Riku and the like is unusual, but not as jarring as blue.) So I thought it reasonable that her hair could be the result of magic, even if I don’t think that would ever be the case in canon.
> 
> This chapter took a much different turn when I typed and edited it than when I first drafted it. It originally had Aqua teaching Van some magic too, but it just didn’t flow well and was actually pretty boring. I’m sure we’ll get some of that in a future chapter, but it’ll play out a lot differently. I don’t want to play too much with the color magic because R-2 already dominated with that in Will Prank For Food. It might show up again, but it might just stay a random part of a conversation in this chapter.
> 
> On another note, I should really watch a playthrough of 0.2 just for some more ideas of what the RoD looks like, especially now that they’re out of the tunnels. This place is a little different because of reasons that might show up in the next chapter, but for the most part I kind of get bored with setting descriptions here. I’m with Van, I like trees.
> 
> Rich Marshmallows are only in the Final Mix version, but they do exist. That was pretty convenient, I didn’t know it until I checked out the wiki for help in this chapter. I imagine Chocolate Valentines as flat heart-shaped pieces of chocolate.
> 
> The marshmallow scene was a little bit of a nod to one of my other stories, “Camping Trip.”
> 
> Random fact: When I was very first imagining this fanfic, one of the first scene ideas I had was where Aqua really wanted a shower, and had Vanitas hold up some kind of cover (towel? IDK, I never got that far) while she sprayed herself off. That idea was just really squicky, especially since I didn’t know if their relationship was going to be romantic or not at that point.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading this chapter and incredibly long author’s note! I got to college in 3 weeks so I’ll see if I can get another chapter out before that, but I’m not sure. If nothing else, at least this chapter doesn’t have a terrible cliffhanger like it was originally going to. :P


	17. Jaws of the Forest

“Vanitas!”

Shouting.  Rumbling, the ground heaving beneath him.  His eyes snapped open to a world in chaos.  Gone was the gentle sunlight of his dream; replacing it was a throng of dark nightmares.  As if to mock his dream further, they were trees.  Shadows of trees, at least, thin trunks sprouting from the ground.  One burst up right under his legs.  He rolled to the side, keyblade flashing to hand, right as the brittle-looking abomination opened its branches wide.

No, not branches - _jaws._

“Van, your Inversed!”  Aqua called from the other side of the clearing, which was quickly becoming less and less clear.

Inversed?  Did she want him to make some?  The stress of being attacked didn't exactly help him--

The demented tree reached down next to him, clamping its jaws around a white Flood.  Where had _that_ come from?

There were two more of them; he hastily absorbed them while slicing his blade through the black not-tree.  It dissolved into a puff of black smoke as it fell.  Was it a type of Heartless, then?

Aqua was destroying them too, the sweeping motions of her blade sending up plumes of darkness as she took out Heartless after Heartless.  Like tough weeds, though, more only sprung up in their wake.

“Aqua, what _happened?_ If this was your freaking Wayfinder again-!”

She glared through another cloud of dense smoke.  “This one’s on _you.”_

She didn’t get to finish explaining, however, before another claw of a tree struck at her.  She braced her blade in a block, the force pushing her back, then finished it off with a burst of Fire.

He turned his attention to his own battle - three of the thorned trees sprouted around him, attempting to form a cage.  He spun, intending to slice through them all at once, but he wasn’t half the ballerina Aqua was.  The move left him off balance, one of the Heartless still standing.  Well, growing.  Could trees stand?

It lunged at him, something trees certainly weren’t supposed to do. He rolled, landing and casting Fire with his free hand.  The dry tree-Heartless-thing went up in flames and smoke.

Three more took its place.  Vanitas cursed, summoning his mask as the leftover darkness stung his eyes, and he steadied his stance.  If they would hold _still_ for a moment, he could fire off a shotlock--

Aqua had the same idea a second earlier, twirling and shooting light with reckless abandon.  How could she keep her balance like that?  It didn’t seem fair.

Fair or not, it was effective.  He found himself unable to tear his eyes away.  When her attack wasn’t aimed at him, it was beautiful.  A destructive kind of beautiful, which was the best kind, in his opinion. Her projectiles vaporized the strange Heartless on contact, so fast he barely saw them pass inches in front of his masked face.

Barely.  But he did see something.

“Aqua?”  He ripped off his helmet and called, but she kept spinning, blasting out light. Light and… something else.  “Aqua, stop!”

She didn’t hear, or chose not to listen.  The spiny trees and their gaping maws were almost gone.  Half a second later, the clearing was empty again.  Aqua spun out of her shotlock, releasing a final burst of light.  It was the confirmation of what he’d thought, and of what he’d feared.

At the center of that light hid a shadow of darkness.

He rushed to her side as she dropped to her knees, breathing heavily.

“That took… more out of me… than I expected.”  She drank a potion, though he didn’t see any cuts on her.  She had been a force of destruction in that moment, and those Heartless, while tall and menacing, weren’t particularly strong.

_Strong enough to freaking_ eat _my Inversed,_ he remembered.  He hadn’t felt any emotions return from that, though he had felt the pain.  But that wasn’t his biggest concern at the moment.

“Do you know why?”  Vanitas asked carefully.  Had she been using darkness on purpose, or accident?  Either option worried him.  The first time she had accidentally used darkness, she had recklessly run away from him.  She had blamed his dark suit then, though he still wasn’t sure if that had had anything to do with it.  But both then and the time after, her darkness had been tied to her anger.  She didn’t seem angry now, but she _had_ used some darkness.  Darkness hidden among light.  A paradox he could barely begin to comprehend.

She shrugged, slowly getting back on her feet.  “We haven’t fought Heartless in a while.  It could be lack of practice.”

“I doubt it.  Aqua, did you notice anything weird when you were fighting?  Anything that didn’t feel right?”

“Why?”  She raised her eyebrows.  “Did you do something to me?”

“What?  No!  Aqua, why would _I_ do something?”

“Well, you _did_ attract those Heartless,” she said, suspicion lining her voice.  As if their time roasting marshmallows had meant nothing.  “And you knew something was wrong with me.”

So she _could_ tell.  “I didn't mean to.  I was having a good dream; I must have created the Inversed subconsciously.”  That had happened with Unversed and nightmares, for a time, before he had learned to control them.

She still stared at him calculatingly, trying to measure the honesty in his voice.  He bristled under that gaze.  Had he done nothing but save her sorry butt over and over again?  So what if she happened to be the one saving the day this time.  He had proven himself time after time.  She would have fallen to the Dark Wind if it weren’t for him.

“Aqua, what’s _wrong_ with you?  You’re not like this.”  Not anymore, at least.  She sounded all too much like she had before their time in the tunnels.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she replied defensively.  But the wisps of darkness rising from her shoulders told a different story.

“Aqua, I’m serious!  Look at–!”

She picked that moment to stumble forward, then fall to her knees, then to her face.

“Aqua!” He knelt by her.  When he clutched her shoulder, it felt cold as ice.  “No!  Not again!  Cure!   _Cure!”_

Though weaker than his Curaga, it was faster.  It calmed the beginning of her shivers.  Bought him a little bit of time.

Why? _Why?_ He didn’t believe it was germs any more.  He could get germs just as easily as her, and he wasn’t sick.  With that darkness rising from her…

Beads of sweat glistened on her forehead.  She moaned loudly, clenching her fists.  He didn’t know what would happen if he didn’t heal her quickly, but he didn’t want to find out.  Why hadn’t he made her teach him magic sooner?

His Curaga panel was still equipped; he gripped her arms and started the process.  The painfully _slow_ process. Magic the consistency of green slime sweated from his palms, mixing with her sweat that had somehow managed to diffuse through her suit.

“You’re going to be fine,” he told her, though it was more for his own benefit.  “You’re strong, Aqua.  You’re the strongest person I know.”

The glow faded into her.  Her skin, milky white for a moment, gained a little more life.  His spell seemed to be working faster this time; maybe it was the practice.  He just hoped it wasn’t his imagination. Her lips parted as her fever slunk away like a wounded animal.

“I… am?”  She whispered.

“Yes.”  He smiled; a Mandrake Inversed nearly sprung out in his relief.  “Now, use that strength and _stop being sick.”_

She chuckled weakly, eyes opening.  “Fine.  Only because you ordered me to.”

Part of him wanted to laugh too, just glad that his spell had worked again, but he didn’t waste time.  “Aqua, _what happened?”_   There was _something_ wrong with her, whether she would admit it or not.  And that something could be a matter of her life or death.

She winced, placing her hand over her heart.  “I don’t know, Van.  I was fighting Heartless, using magic, and then… it felt _off_ somehow.  I can’t describe it.  Then after that you were talking to me, and…”

“And?”

She blushed.  “And…  I just felt so sure it was your fault.  I don’t know where it came from.  I spoke on impulse, and it wasn’t fair to you at all.  I’m sorry.”

That was all well and good for her to say, but inside, something shifted.  He had come to trust and rely on Aqua’s friendship these past couple of weeks.  She had helped heal his schism, tame his Unversed again, adjust to the light in his heart.  She hadn’t given up on him.  Why would she now?

“No problem.”  He shrugged.  “Forget about it.”

But he would remember.

XXX

He let her sleep this time, keeping watch over their camp in the flickering light of the Fira.  Too many things didn’t make sense.  The strange Inversed-eating Heartless.  Aqua’s darkness leaking out.  She was right; he didn’t want to stay in the Realm of Darkness.  Regardless of what he’d said before, this place wasn’t safe for them.  At least, not for her.

He watched her chest rise and fall.  She was breathing evenly, no sign of sickness.  He kept expecting it to strike at any moment.  That worried him more than any Heartless threat.

Despite the danger, he hadn’t brought himself to tell her that she’d been using darkness.  He hadn’t had any proof after she’d fallen unconscious, and he wasn’t sure she could shoulder any more burdens at this point.  Using darkness wasn’t safe for her; he could tell that much.  As he kept his vigil, he pieced together some of the thoughts in his head.

The first episode of her sickness had been after they first encountered the Dark Wind.  She had been exposed to it longer than he had.  But then they had fought it off again, and she hadn’t fallen sick that time.  Then she used her own darkness fighting off Heartless, and she _did_ get sick again.  Was there any kind of pattern?  He assumed it was the darkness, mostly because he couldn’t think of any other cause, but her suit should be keeping her safe from that.

He had to find out; how else could he protect her?  His mind ran circles, only succeeding in making him more tired.  He couldn’t have gotten much sleep before the Heartless attack.  Yawning, he stared into the fire, wishing he had more marshmallows.  He did have a Crystal Soda left over from earlier; he popped off the bottle gap and took a deep swig.  Mmm. Sweet and fizzy. A tingle of energy washed over him, helping him stay awake.

Too bad he couldn’t pass the time by practicing with Inversed.  He had enough positivity from the tasty drink to create a few, but they might draw more of the strange Heartless.  If those things even _were_ Heartless.  They needed a name.  Their tops looked like jaws, or maybe claws.  Treeclaws?  No, that was stupid.  Trees were too cool to be Heartless anyway.  The way they moved was kind of like a snaking vine, maybe a tentacle…?

Tentaclaw.  That name would do.  He nodded in satisfaction.

So he couldn’t make Inversed, because the Tentaclaws could come back and eat them.  Maybe he could practice something else useful.

He plucked his command deck from its safe place in his belt, then rummaged through it.  So many dark attacks; Curaga and Aeroga were the only normal magic he had equipped.  Another hidden slot in his belt held his unequipped commands.  He spread those out on the ground in front of him, noting their variety.  Most of these he had never used, and why would he?  Many of them weren’t based in darkness.

He wasn’t confined to that now.  Xehanort couldn’t force him to use only darkness, and he had had his pride beaten down enough to admit that there might be a better way.  Still, taking out some of the dark commands, he felt as if he were betraying a part of himself.

He did it anyway.  Now, the question was, what commands _should_ he use?  Light ones weren’t an option; even if he had any, he doubted he would be able to use them.  Inversed were different from light magic, since they were powered by emotion rather than pure magic.

Ventus was strong in the Aero element, which was the reason Vanitas usually avoided it, but recent experiences had shown him the foolishness in that.  It was effective against the Dark Wind, and he seemed naturally able to use it without charging it with darkness.  He slapped in Tornado and Windcutter; might as well use every advantage he could get.

With the few slots he had left, he put in the normal forms of Thundaga, Firaga, and Blizzaga.  Hopefully Aqua would be able to help him learn to use those better soon.  Just having the command equipped would do a lot for his skill, but he would still need practice and instruction.  Instruction wasn’t something he could get while she was asleep, but practice, maybe…

Curaga would be the quietest, but he didn’t think he could improve much on that without her help.  Firaga didn’t seem safe to practice on dry trees, and Thundaga was way too loud, so he settled on Blizzaga.  It was the easiest of the three for him to use without darkness, anyway.

Still, it might be a _little_ loud… He stood, brushed the splinters from his log-chair off his butt, and crept a little ways into the forest.  Not far; he could still see Aqua lying there in the glow of the Fira between the trees.

He stared down a tree and summoned his keyblade, holding it near his head in a taunting stance.  “Alright.  Go!”

A chunk of ice burst from the tip of his blade, shot forward, and impaled itself in the tree’s trunk.  It wasn’t very big, or very fast.  Not compared to his dark form, anyway.  He waited for his command to reload, thinking of how best to try again.  Maybe if he kept the spell attached to his keyblade for a moment, let the ice crystals grow before launching them…

He tried again.  This time, the ice _was_ larger, but it also fell to the ground before he could shoot it.  A growl rose in the back of his throat, but he wasn’t ready to give up yet.

He tried to lose himself in his practice, but it was mostly a distraction from bigger worries.  What would a stronger Blizzaga do against the Dark Wind, if it somehow found them again up here?  How were they going to find their way out without his sense of smell or using Aqua’s Wayfinder?  Did she still blame him for the earlier Heartless attack?  It wasn’t his fault he’d had a decent dream for the first time in his life.

Thinking of Aqua, he turned away from the ice-crusted tree and peered through the woods to check on her.  He hadn’t heard anything, but the Fira was blazing higher than it had before.  Much too high; if it grew any taller, it might catch the branches above.  Was Aqua having nightmares?

He dashed back through the skeletal trees to check on her. The distorted firelight had thrown him off, but he could soon see that she wasn’t there.  

“Aqua?”

The Fira flickered fitfully in reply.  How was it still here?  When she slept, it sometimes reacted to her emotions, like it was connected to her.  That meant she had to be nearby, right?  “Aqua!”

_Seriously, not this again!  The_ one _time I slack on guard duty…_

He didn't panic this time.  He hadn’t been gone long; she couldn’t have gotten far.  Maybe he could look for footprints in the ground those Tentaclaws broke up.  He knelt down, trailing his fingers through the loosened dirt, but saw no tracks.  Of course, Heartless wouldn’t leave footprints…

Rustling.  Behind him.

He turned around just in time to see a Tentaclaw’s maw envelop him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve decided to try to get as much of this fic done as I can before going back to college, so hopefully that means at least a few more updates. The goal is really to finish it, but considering I only have two and a half weeks, we’ll see. I blitz-wrote the end of Will Prank For Food, and I’ve gotten faster since then. I estimate there being around 5 chapters left, though that could vary. I do have the end mostly planned out, which helps with my writing motivation. 
> 
> If you’ve played 358/2 Days, you’ll know what the Tentaclaws are. Hate those stupid things.
> 
> Thanks for everyone who’s voted on Aqua’s hair so far! I can’t promise it will be soon, but it will make an appearance eventually.


	18. Gold

Vanitas had never wanted to know what it felt like to be swallowed.  Not that the universe ever cared what he wanted.

He felt like a soggy loaf of bread being shoved down a kitchen sink.  A sink that was squeezing, pushing, forcing him… somewhere.  He was pretty sure he blacked out for some of it, the stench of fungus and plant-bile overpowering even his clogged nose.  Why, why, _why_ was his helmet never on at the right times?  Forget Aqua; he was going to have to start wearing it again.

He wanted to scream, but he didn’t want the Tentaclaw’s acid pouring down his throat.  It already threatened to soak into his eyes.  The skin of his face burned like he’d been plunged in liquid Firaga.  He summoned his keyblade, hoping to cut a hole and escape, but it just lodged in the Tentaclaw’s insides and was ripped away as he was forced onward.

He was barely conscious enough to think that this would be a stupid way to die.

Finally, when his lungs threatened to give out, the monster spat him out into the air.  He screamed loud enough that people in the Realm of Light might have heard him.  Then gravity kicked in, and he plunged back to the ground.  Eyes still shut tight, he braced himself for impact -

It didn’t come.  Instead, he lurched, caught in the air a few feet above the ground.  He blinked open his eyes and found himself surrounded by a soft purple glow.  He bobbed there for a moment before the spell wore off, and he landed on his stomach.

“Ugh…”

His head spun, his ears were clogged, and most of his health had been leeched away.  What in the Void _was_ that?

Another Tentaclaw burst from the ground, lunging for him.  He tried to roll away, but it was so _fast—_

And suddenly Aqua was there, blocking the Tentaclaw’s strike.  She shouted something he couldn’t hear.  If only he’d been wearing his helmet!

The Tentaclaw fell over, stunned, and Aqua destroyed it before spraying him with a firehose’s worth of water.  Despite coughing and nearly choking on it, he did feel a little better.  And he could hear again.

“Curaga. Esuna,” she cast over him.  Four little diamonds of light surrounded him along with the usual green glow.  It seemed to take care of the acid that had still been burning his skin.

“You need to teach me that,” he choked out, still spitting out the rancid taste of bile.

She nodded.  “Soon as we’re done with _that.”_

Now that his ears and eyes were clear, he could see and hear the giant Heartless that dominated the larger clearing.  At its top loomed a large purple flower bulb, held up by jagged Tentaclaw-like legs.  That must have been what spit him into the air.  A giant coffin hung from the bulb, rocking and shaking like something inside wanted out.

Vanitas summoned Void Gear.  “You got a plan of attack?”

She nodded.  How long had she been fighting this thing before he showed up?  At least she wasn’t chewing him out for letting it eat her on his watch… yet.

“I think the vines like the ones that ate us are its weak points.  There’s a creature in the coffin; it will lash out if you get too close.  It also shoots poisonous spores.”

“So… kill the Tentaclaws first, and don’t die.” he summarized.

“Tentaclaws?”

“Yeah, those things.”  He sliced through one that sprouted next to them.

“You… named them?”

“Yeah.  Much easier to talk about how to kill something if you give it a name.  You can pick one for the big one, if you want.”

He summoned his helmet and ran to the next Tentaclaw, leaving her shaking her head.  Much as he wanted to try out his new magic, he’d better stick with what he was good at for now.  That meant stabs and strikes steeped in darkness.  Fortunately, unlike the giant Heartless they’d fought here before, dark attacks actually worked on these things.

“Too slow,” he taunted one, skidding to the side and stabbing into its mouth as it tried to swallow him.  He wasn't about to go through _that_ again.

Backing up, he got a sighting on several of the monsters, aiming up for a shotlock.  He released a thick laser of darkness that vaporized about half of them.  At least these ones seemed to stay dead, rather than growing right back up.

He glanced over his shoulder, where Aqua was laying waste with Time Splicer.  In spite of her sickness and having been eaten by the giant Heartless, she was doing surprisingly well.  Must be from her superior knowledge of healing spells.

In his moment of distraction, a volley of spores took him from behind.  He held his ground and spun to block some of them, even though he felt sick to his stomach.  Was he poisoned?  He hadn’t thought to leave a Panacea in his command deck, and Aqua was all the way across the battlefield.  

_Shake it off.  No stupid plant’s getting the best of me._ He cast Cure and kept fighting.

Before too long, it was just him, Aqua, and the giant Heartless.  As she struck down the last Tentaclaw, the whole thing shuddered, and then it collapsed to the ground.

“Now’s our chance!”  Aqua called.  Her body glowed with the Ghost Drive command style; she practically teleported over to the coffin.  Vanitas dove into the ground, a move he hadn’t had the opportunity to use lately, and struck up directly underneath the Heartless.

“How did you know this would work?”  He asked, launching into a string of blows.

She shrugged as much as she could while launching volleys of Firaga.  “Instinct.  Fighting your Unversed taught me a lot.”

“Careful, Aqua.  I’m almost tempted to think that’s a compliment.”

She didn’t see his grin, caught up as she was in fighting.  When would this thing die already?

It heaved back up on its skinny legs like some kind of giant spider.

“Looks like playtime’s over.”  He cartwheeled away as something slashed towards him from inside the coffin.

Unfortunately, he cartwheeled into the path of a newly grown Tentaclaw.  It lunged for him, and he sprung back, shooting a burst of Blizzaga at it in midair.  That dazed it for a second, giving him time to finish it off.

There were just so _many_ of them.  He and Aqua were a whirlwind, two halves of a Heartless-destroying machine, but would it be enough?  Exhaustion crept uninvited through his bones.  The Heartless belched poison gas, enough to filter in through his mask.  He cast Cure again.  He really needed to learn that Esuna spell.

He dove into a pool of darkness again, coming up outside the circle of Tentaclaws that had surrounded him.  Did that move always leave him so dizzy?  He pushed through it, cutting down the black claws.  The air was a purple haze; more poison?  Could that be why he… why he felt so… weak…

Aqua’s cry pierced the haze.  Fear shoved aside, he leapt back into the stony ground, shooting underneath the giant Heartless and appearing where he’d last seen her.  Char marks from her Thundaga spells dotted the ground, but she wasn’t there.

He chopped down the remaining Tentaclaws, then turned back to the evil flower Heartless.  Any second now…

Aqua shot out of the top of the purple bulb.  Vanitas didn’t know how to catch her with the kind of spell she had used on him.  Instead he threw his keyblade in a hasty strike raid, clearing the way before him, and ran.

She crashed into his outstretched arms, and they skidded across the hard ground, landing in yet another cluster of Tentaclaws.  He hadn’t recovered his blade from the strike raid; he shot a Blizzaga, Firaga, and Thundaga from his hands. 

“Aqua, are you alright?”  He asked.  He was pinned under her weight, but she didn’t move.  Her eyes were closed, her hair matted with green bile.

Why, _why_ didn’t he know any useful magic?  She had been able to heal him from that attack in no time.  She must have survived it still conscious the first time and healed herself, but now…

Now it was up to him.  He channeled his desire to protect her, to heal her, into a guard of Protector Inversed.  Light bled from him as five of the creatures formed, leaving him feeling emptier, lighter.  The Protectors circled around them, tackling Tentaclaws and punching them when they got too close.

“Don’t worry, Aqua.  I’ve got this.”  He took a deep breath, holding her tight.  “Curaga!”

Green light washed over his body, diffusing into hers.  Holding her in his arms seemed to help, but his magic was already so drained from the fight.  “Come on!  I’ve got to have enough…”

A Tentaclaw swallowed one of the Protectors.  Two more fell in succession, their bright light snuffed out.  Without the positivity returning to him, he felt even emptier than before.  The pain interrupted his Curaga, and the green glow faded.  “No!”

The other two Protectors fought valiantly, keeping close to him.  It wouldn’t be enough.  There were just too many of them.

“Aqua, I need you!”  He shook her, hoping the little bit of healing magic could’ve awakened her.  No such luck, not with the poison still leeching away her life.  If he couldn’t heal her soon…

He reached for his unequipped commands, hoping to find a Potion, though he didn’t remember seeing one earlier.  At the same time, the Heartless swallowed his two remaining Protectors.  He clutched his heart in agony.  No.  _No._ If a Tentaclaw swallowed her again, she would die.  Come to think of it, so might he.  The purple haze fuzzed his vision, even through the mask.

His mind could only come up with one remaining option.  He didn’t know what it would do to her.  But he had to try.

He cast Dark Curaga.

A purple-black glow pressed down on Aqua.  She cried out as a spasm wracked her body.  She rolled off of him, still shaking, hands pressed to the sides of her head.  Vanitas winced; he’d known it would hurt, but had it worked?  Had the risk been worth it? Finally, her eyes flashed open.  He gasped.

They were bright gold.

“Vanitas… what have you done?”  Aqua’s eyes, the horribly wrong color, were filled with betrayal.  He gulped, summoning his keyblade.

“I saved your life.”  _I hope._ Regardless, there was nothing he could do now.  It was done.

“I don’t feel _saved— Van_!”  

She grabbed his arms just as a Tentaclaw seized his legs.  It swung up, trying to rip him out of her grip, but she held tight.  It tried to swallow; he could feel it sucking him down.  A scream rose in his throat.

If she let go, he would die.  After what he’d done to her, that might be what she wanted.

“Aqua… please…”  He begged.  He could see it in her eyes.  A hardness, a coldness, an emptiness.  In saving her, he might have damned her.

“Shut up, Vanitas.”  Her voice was surprisingly soft, despite her eyes.  Eyes that now glistened with tears.

The Tentaclaw jerked.  Aqua let go.

He thought he was dead.  He knew he was dead.  But a second later, the Tentaclaw’s body dissolved around him.

Vanitas fell to the ground amidst clouds of purple and black smoke.  Dying Tentaclaws mixed with the noxious fumes of the Leechgrave – he decided to name it, since Aqua likely wouldn’t now.  His health still leaked away, but he was safe.  For now.

Aqua locked eyes with him, then nodded and disappeared into the smoke.  He caught glimpses of her teleporting around the battlefield, appearing and disappearing and leaving more smoke in her wake.  Some was from the Heartless.  Some wafted straight off of her.

Clenching his teeth, he plunged himself back into the fight.  Soon they had eliminated the Tentaclaws, and the Leechgrave collapsed again.  He dashed to the coffin, clearing the battlefield with a burst of Aeroga.  Again, Aqua was already there.  She hovered in the air, surrounded by giant orbs of darkness.  He wanted to call for her to stop, but knew it was too late.  She was teleporting between them, launching them at the coffin.  Each volley was punctuated with a scream.  Each one was another dagger in his heart.  He tried to drown it out by launching a Tornado at the Leechgrave.

This time, their powers combined were enough.  The Leechgrave lurched, and the imprisoned Heartless tried to escape one last time before it went out in a pillar of smoke and a giant glowing heart.  The positivity of his swallowed Inversed returned to him, hitting him with a gut-punch of happiness that felt horribly, horribly wrong.

Aqua fell to her knees, only keeping herself from collapsing further by stabbing her keyblade, both hands clutching the hilt, into the ground.  Her breath came in ragged gasps; darkness still wisped from her.  Her eyes were shut tight, but he instinctively knew that when she opened them, they would still be gold.

She shook, and he thought that she might be falling sick again.  When he knelt beside her, he realized it was the shuddering of suppressed sobs.

“Aqua…” He reached out a hand, but he didn’t know what to do with it.  It fell uselessly back to his side.

Her eyes stayed shut, but she turned to him slightly.  “I saw myself, Vanitas.  In the reflection of your mask.  I… I…”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“ _Sorry_ won’t take the darkness out of my heart!”  She screamed.  The wispy tendrils rose higher with her anger, as if to prove her point.  “ _What did you do to me!?”_

“I—I saved you.”  Tears glistened in his own eyes.  “I wasn’t strong enough, Aqua.  I couldn’t heal you with my regular Curaga, I _tried,_ I swear.  I had to use Dark Curaga.  It… it was the only way.”

She took in a sharp breath.  The darkness calmed around her, fading back into her suit. “Maybe… you should have just let me die.”

“No.”  He shook his head violently, though his voice stayed a whisper.  “I thought that once, too.  Never again.  If you die, there’s no going back.  But this doesn’t have to be permanent.  Just look at what you did to me.”  He almost laughed.  Almost.

Her eyes blinked open.  Her yellow eyes.  “You mean… you think we can fix this?  I can be light again?”

He smiled.  “You said it yourself, Aqua.  No one can stray so far from the light that there’s no way to go back.”

“You remember that?”

Of course he did.  It had been the first glimmer of hope in his life.  “Yes.  We’ll get out of here, Aqua.  I swear we will.”

Her head drooped.  She didn’t believe it, not yet.  “I feel so cold.  So empty.  I feel… so much anger…”

“I know.”  He nodded.  That had been his whole life, until recently.

Her tears dripped onto her hands, rolled down them onto her keyblade.  Her voice was hoarse, a shallow whisper.  “Vanitas… I don’t think I can forgive you.  Not yet.”

His heart fell.  Of course.  What had he expected?  “…I know.”

“I want to,” she added, lifting him up a little.  “I’m just so afraid… Vanitas, you’ve been getting lighter.  You’re not all darkness anymore.  Meanwhile, I’ve been getting darker.  I’ve felt myself slipping, even before now.”

“Aqua… what are you saying?”  His voice cracked.  She swallowed and shook her head.

“I don’t know.  I don’t want to know.  I think if I did… I would hate you.”

His heart felt like his dive platform.  The one he’d shattered.

“No,” he whispered.  Ventus had told him… that he’d connected with someone else.  If he’d connected with Aqua… if he was the reason for her darkness…  “No.    _No!_ Aqua, that can’t be what’s happening!  I’m more than just your shadow!”

“Are you, Vanitas?  Are you?” 

“Don’t call me that!  I’m _Van_ to you!  I’m your _friend!”_

Her wet eyes held his.  Gold on gold.  “…Are you?”

“You… you don’t mean that…” 

The dam holding back her sobs broke open.  Just as his heart did. Her keyblade, her crutch, disappeared, but he caught her in his arms.  She shuddered and shook, her tears soaking his back.  She had torn him apart.  And still he held her. 

Finally, still crying, she hugged him back.  Clung to him like roots clinging to ground in a hurricane.  Like if she let go, the darkness would spirit her away.  In spite of her words and his own fears, or maybe because of them, he still felt safer in her arms. 

Tears squeezed themselves from his eyes too.  No sound came out; he was too empty to sob.  The last of his emotions fell not in the form of Unversed, but in clear water droplets on her back.

They held each other until their eyes were dry, and sleep took them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has to be the saddest thing I’ve written. For this fic or any of them. (Maybe “Whatever You Want to Do” was worse, but I’ve basically blocked that one from my memory. *sweatdrop*) Man. This was tough. At the same time, this is also one of the chapters I’m most proud of, though I had a lot of issues with sentence structure for some reason, probably because I tend to use too many choppy sentences in my battle scenes, and this is all like one huge battle scene. Normally I really don’t enjoy writing fight scenes, which might be why I like this one all the more for it.
> 
> Finally, we’ve gotten to the real role reversal part of this fic. I knew it was going to have to be terrible.
> 
> So yeah! Stay tuned!


	19. Learning from the Best

Vanitas awoke slowly, wrapped in warmth and a pleasant scent.  A soft scent, light and airy, like fresh laundry.  Not too strong, not like cleaning spray or flowery shampoo.  The scent of light, just slightly shrouded in a comfortable darkness.  The scent of dusk.

The smell was almost pleasant enough to make him ignore the crick in his neck, and the fact that he’d apparently fallen asleep on his knees.  How had he done that?  And what was the heavy thing he had his arms around?

He opened his eyes.  He was still holding Aqua; their weight leaning against each other had balanced out, leaving them sleeping upright this whole time.  Her mouth hung open slightly as she slept.  …Was that _drool?_

He flung himself back, and she rocked forward before awaking with a start.  “What?  Heartless?”

“No,” he replied, wiping off his damp and sticky shoulder, but otherwise offering no explanation.

They sat in awkward silence for a few moments, avoiding each others’ gaze, not sure whether or not to bring up the events of the previous day.  Was it really something that could be ignored?  Aqua had basically accused him of stealing her light.  As if he’d even wanted it in the first place.  _She_ had been the one practically begging him to take it.  Besides, she didn’t even have any proof that he had _stolen_ it; she had used darkness long before he had shown any sign of using light. Maybe she would apologize for her assumptions today, but he doubted it. 

He turned away and summoned his mask.  Today would be a good day to keep his emotions to himself.

“So,” Aqua began uncomfortably.  He couldn’t tell if it was from guilt, or just from the fact that she was still stuck with him.  “How can we find our way out of here now?”

She still expected him to have all the answers?  She would be disappointed.

He shrugged.  “My smell doesn’t work as well anymore.  Since it seems like Heartless are going to attack us anyway, might as well use that shiny charm of yours.”  It would still attract more Heartless than he liked, but what other option did they have?

She nodded, about to untangle it from her belt, but he held up a hand to stop her.  “Wait.  We’re not going anywhere yet.”

Her yellow eyes narrowed.  Would that sight ever get any less uncanny?  “Why not?”

“Because you’re going to teach me magic.”

“Look, _Van,_ I’m not really in the mood to teach anyone anything.”  She used his nickname this time, but it bore an edge.

“Are you in the mood to let me use Dark Curaga again the next time you’re in danger?”  He snapped.  She flinched back; he forced himself to use a calmer tone.  “Please, Aqua.  I just want to make things right.”

She stared into his helmet – probably staring into the eyes of her reflection.  “Alright,” she finally sighed.  “But take that that awful thing off.”

He nodded and dissolved his mask.  “Oh, and one other thing.”

“What?”  She asked, already losing patience.  He didn’t look forward to learning to use magic under that kind of attitude, but considering he was used to Xehanort’s abusive teaching style, it couldn’t be too bad.

“You need to let me teach you how to use darkness.”

_“What?_ No!”  She spat the word like the darkness had already left a foul taste in her mouth.  “Why in the _worlds_ would I do that?”

“Because it will use _you_ if you let it,” he argued.

“Then I won’t let it!  I’ll be strong enough!”

He shook his head.  “See, that’s a common misconception about darkness.  That if you’re ‘strong’ enough, you can just ignore it, and it will go away.  If that were the case, you wouldn’t have this problem in the first place.”

She crossed her arms.  “Then what _am_ I supposed to do?  I won’t give into it!”

“No, you won’t.  You’ll _control_ it.  Show it that your will is stronger.  By ignoring it, you’re telling it that you’re scared of it, and that it’s welcome to do whatever it wants.”

“You make it sound like the darkness has a mind of its own.”  She frowned.

“I don’t know about all that, but that’s how it works.”  He shrugged.  “You want to teach me first, or me teach you?”

“I’ll teach you.”  She stood and summoned Master Keeper.  For a moment he thought she was readying a spell to use against him, but she just pulled out an empty potion bottle that had been tucked in her belt, filled it with water, and washed her face.

“I could use that spell,” he commented.  She sniffed as she dismissed her blade.

“Yeah.  You could.”

“What?”  He lifted an arm and took a whiff.  The suit kept in most of his body odor, and he wasn’t any smellier than usual.  In fact, he smelled better, probably due either to Aqua washing him off yesterday or him sleeping so close to her clean scent.  “I smell great.”

Her nose scrunched up.  “Maybe it’s just a boy thing…”

“Whatever.  You gonna teach me or what?”

“Right.  We’ll start with Curaga, since that’s an element you’ve already shown some capability in, before moving on to a brand new element.”  A green aura surrounded her palm as she explained; he stared at it intently.  “The Cure element is, by nature, the element most closely related to light.  As such, the rules governing light magic tend to apply to its use as well.”

“Well, that explains why it’s so dang hard,” he muttered.  Trying to follow her academic language was almost as difficult.  She had hardly spent any time as a Keyblade Master, right?  How had she already gotten the full-on ‘lecture the apprentice’ voice down?

“Correct.”  She twisted her hand through the air, leaving a radioactive-looking trail behind.  “However, even hearts dimmed by darkness can use it, difficult though it may be.  I had never heard of a ‘Dark Curaga’ until… well.”

He didn’t wince, though her gaze looked like it was intended to make him do so.  “Guess I’m just more creative than most people.”  That hadn’t been a spell Xehanort had taught him, and it hadn’t been a deck command, either.  It had originated simply as a primal way to save himself from his master’s torture.

“Anyway.”  She cleared her throat and let the healing glow fade from her hand.  “To improve your Curaga, you will need to understand the basic principles of light magic.”  He made a face at that, but she ignored it.  “The first is this:  light cannot be forced.  It must be allowed to flow naturally, from the heart.”

“You make it sound like _light_ has a mind of its own.”

“As you said, that is simply how it works.  Now, you try.  Don’t force the spell.  Let it come to you.”

Ugh.  That sounded stupid, but she was the expert here.  He held out a hand, palm up, and shouted “Curaga!”

The glow began to pool in the center of his hand.  He waited.  A little more trickled in, giving off faint green mist.  But it was so _slow!_ Surely he could push it faster?

“Don’t,” she read it on his face.

“But I’ve done it before!  I can make it go faster!”

“To a certain extent,” she replied.  “Think of it like a river.  You can splash and push a small bit of water along, but to do so you ignore the greater power of the current.  It would flow more smoothly if you weren’t in the way at all.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”  Of _course_ the stupid metaphor she came up with would be about water.

“Just try it.  You can manipulate the riverbanks and change its direction; you can still make it flow where you wish.  The water, the magic itself, knows what to do when it gets there.”

“Ugh, fine.”  He had been subconsciously pushing on his Curaga spell; he forced himself to let go.  To his surprise, its light gained momentum, washing over his arm to his neck.  The pain of his awkward sleeping position evaporated.  “ _Oh.”_

Aqua smiled smugly.  “Told you so.”

“Hey, that’s my line.”

“Van, you can’t own a line.  Everyone says that.”

“If by everyone you mean _me,_ then yeah.”

She just rolled her eyes.  “It’s still a little slow.  Let’s have you try it on me.”

To his annoyance, the spell was still much more difficult to use on another person.  It certainly flowed more easily, like he had been holding it back by trying to make it work faster.  Maybe it was just stubborn.  Like a certain blue-haired girl he knew.

He growled.  “Still not good enough.”

“You’ll get better with practice.”  She smiled.  “Master Eraqus once had me practice one hundred Curaga spells in one day.”

He snorted.  “You’re kidding.  You’d run out of injuries to heal.  There’d be no way to tell if it even worked.”

“You’d be surprised how many ways Terra and Ven could accidentally hurt themselves.”  She laughed, and a little of the old light returned to her eyes.  “It was the same day the Master had them clean out the attic. I think I had the better end of that deal.”

Even he laughed at the thought of those idiots bumbling around, tripping over old junk and having to go to Aqua like hurt puppies.  “You’re not gonna make me do that, right?”

“Well, I doubt I could force you to do anything, but no.  Besides, I don’t see any attics around here.”  She laughed again; it sounded all the better for how long it felt since he’d heard it.  “I’m sure you’ll have plenty of opportunities to practice as we travel.  Let’s go.”

“Wait, that’s it?”  He asked.  “What about that Esuna thing?  And making water?”

“You can’t possibly learn that all at once; I’ll teach you more tomorrow.  You still want to get out of here, right?  We should go before any Heartless realize that the giant one is gone.”

“Leechgrave.  I named it, figured you wouldn’t care.”  Judging by the unimpressed look on her face, he was right.  She was already pulling out her Wayfinder again.  “Wait!  You’re forgetting the other part of our deal.  You still need me to teach you how to use the darkness.”

“Later,” she said with her back to him, in a voice that really meant _never._

“No.  _Not_ later.  _Now.”_

She spun, and he jumped with the speed of her reaction.  “Would you like to try to make me?”

Was… was that a _threat?_ Her hand looked ready to grasp the hilt of a keyblade.  “Look, Aqua, this is for your own good!  Why don’t you trust me?”

“Maybe because, I don’t know, _you_ might be the one taking my light in the first place.”  Had that thought still been bottled up in her this whole time?  Her eyes glowed like yellow flames.  It brought to mind images of Heartless, or of wild animals.  Like with the Curaga spell, he wouldn’t be able to use force here.  He had to rely on calm words, remain steady. 

He held up his hands carefully.  “That’s just the darkness talking.  The Aqua I know wouldn’t say that.”

She bared her teeth, fiercer than ever.  Wrong words.  Well, he’d never claimed to be good at diplomacy. 

“How am I supposed to know!  How can I tell what’s darkness, and what’s _me?”_ Her hands clutched clumps of her hair.  “I’m _trying,_ Van!  I don’t want to be angry; I don’t want to feel this way!”

The darkness began to mist from her.  How did it come on so quickly?  Had he ever been this incompetent at controlling it? Of course, he had never known any different.  She saw the mist and tried vainly to wipe it from her arms.  “Make it _stop!”_

“I will,” he said calmly, approaching slowly.  “But you’re going to have to trust me.”

Her breaths came quickly; one hand reached for her heart.  “Just tell me!”

“Okay, okay.  First, stop panicking.  You’re showing fear; that’s just making it worse.”

“Easy for _you_ to say.  You don’t have black mist coming out of you every time you get mad!”

Actually, he did.  They were called Unversed.  But this probably wasn’t a good time to point that out.

“Aqua, stop fighting me on this.  You’re going to be _fine.”_ He had crept close enough to place his hands on her shoulders.  The touch made her flinch; her eyes darted from his.  “Look at me.  Breathe like I do.”

He inhaled slowly through his nose.  She gasped in through her mouth at first, but managed to exhale in unison.  They stood there, just breathing, for what felt like a long time, though in reality it was only seconds.

“Good.  Now, you’ve got to the show the darkness who’s boss.”

“How—how do I do that?”

“First, get that fear out of your voice.  Darkness can’t do anything to you unless you let it.  Feeding it with fear and anger – _that’s_ what gives it power over you.  Take a second and breathe some more if you need to.”

She nodded.  “I’m-” she cleared her throat, “I’m fine now.  I don’t need to be afraid.  Light will always be able to fight the darkness.”

Well, that was a close enough sentiment.  The mist barely wisped off of her now.  “Alright.  Now might be the hard part.  Reach down to your magic and _pull_ the darkness out.”

“What – pull it out?  You mean use it?”  The purple mist danced to her racing heartbeat.  “I can’t.”

“You can, Aqua.  Trust me.  You don’t treat a thorn by pushing it deeper into your skin, do you?”

“Well… no.”

“Exactly.  So long as you don’t use it to destroy, releasing the darkness won’t give it strength.”  Xehanort had told him that, though in reverse.  Using darkness to destroy would increase its power.

“Then… you might want to stand back.”  Her mouth drew to a line; her eyes hardened in determination.  He smiled and backed up to a safe distance.  “Here goes… _ragh!”_

She screamed as the darkness tore from her, a violet pillar that exploded into the void above.  How could she possibly have so much?  The pillar remained, like the sustained note of her scream, for several seconds.  He expected it to fade quickly.

“Uh—Aqua?  Aqua!”

“ _Help!_ Vanitas – it’s crushing me!”

He barely paused a moment to equip a Hi-Potion and his mask, then dashed into the storm of her darkness.  He was still dark enough that it barely affected him, which begged the question:  If _he_ still had plenty of darkness, where did hers come from?

Though the swirling violet smoke buffeted him and obscured his vision, he could make out the shadowed form of Aqua at its center.  “Hold on!  I’m coming!”

Once he was close enough, he fired Aeroga away from them, clearing a decent amount of the mist.  She still screamed in agony as more poured through her.

“You have to fight it, Aqua!  Show it how strong you really are!  _Push it out!”_

With so much darkness, flooding through someone who used to be so full of light… was it even possible?  This situation could be different from any he’d ever seen.  For all he knew, darkness wouldn’t even work the same here as it had in the Realm of Light.

Had he just asked Aqua to commit suicide?

“I… will not… be ruled… by… _darkness!”_

With one final burst, the dark mist flew out in every direction, then dissolved.  Vanitas caught Aqua before she could fall to the ground.

“Aqua!  Are you alright?”  He shook her.  She coughed up a remnant of the smoke.

“Ugh… Van, that was _the_ stupidest thing I have ever done.  And my best friends were two stupid boys.”

He grinned, though she wouldn’t be able to see it through his mask.  “Did it work, though?  Do you feel any better?”

She got her footing.  “I feel like I got stomped on by a Darkside.  But my heart…” She placed a hand over it, staring into Vanitas’s helmet at the same time.  “I don’t feel so angry right now.  I… think I feel more like myself.  But my eyes…”

“They’re still gold.”  He dissolved his mask.  “I figured this wouldn’t fix them, but I don’t know why they changed color in the first place.  You shouldn’t have enough darkness to turn your eyes gold unless you took much more of mine, and I can tell I still have plenty.”

“That’s a good point.  Plus, if gold eyes are related to darkness, how would your eyes still be gold if you took my light?  Wouldn’t we have switched, or something?”

“That’s what I’m saying!  I don’t think my light comes from you, and I don’t think your darkness comes from me.  There’s too many things that don’t add up.”

“I used darkness before, near when we first met.  I assumed it was your cloaking spell that caused it.”  She rested her hand under her chin.  “Then I didn’t use it again until yesterday.  But for a long time, I’ve felt it there.  Stirring inside me.  I thought it was just my hatred and fear of this place, but now… it could have been the darkness.  Could I develop darkness by hating it?”

“That doesn’t sound right, but how should I know?”  He shrugged.  He tried to ignore the thought that his cloaking spell, or by extension his dark suit, could have had anything to do with it.  “I bet it’s just the Realm of Darkness infecting you.  Like I said before, no being of light has ever survived here.”

She shuddered.  Guess that wasn’t a very comforting thought.  “You’re probably right.  So when we get out…”

“…You should go back to normal.”  That might be a completely false hope, but at least it was _a_ hope.  False or not, she needed it now.  “In the mean time, I have some better ideas for teaching you how to control the darkness.  Hopefully you won’t hate me for that.  Oh, and one other idea – if you want, you could try some of your color magic on your eyes.  That could work, right?”

“Van, I don’t hate you.”  She flushed.  Funny that that would be the first thing she picked up on.  “I’m sorry I implied that.  This has all been… well, it’s just been hard.  I don’t know how _you_ have managed to develop any light down here, of all places.”

“Well, it’s not like I could get any darker.”  He smiled.  “And I _did_ have a pretty good example.”

A grin edged its way onto her face, replacing some of her earlier gloom.  “Watch out, Van.  That almost sounded like a compliment.”

“So what if it was?”  He smirked.  Some of the tension left his chest.  Maybe Aqua hadn’t said outright that she’d forgiven him, but she at least didn’t hate him.  At one point that would have been more than he could imagine.

Aqua chuckled, then touched the skin beneath one eye.  “As for the other idea… do you think it would work?  Changing my eyes back, I mean?”

He shrugged.  “You’re the magic expert, not me.  Long as there’s no chance of you blinding yourself, I would say to go for it.”

She smiled hopefully at that.  “Alright.  I’ll give it a try.”

“Wait,” he interrupted, and she sighed.

“Really?  What is it this time?”

He suddenly felt embarrassed to ask, but his curiosity won out.  “If you changed your hair blue, what color was it first?  I asked before, but you didn’t answer.”

“Oh.”  She blushed, turning away slightly.  Did her hair look _that_ bad before she fixed it?  Maybe where she was from, everyone’s hair was a ridiculously boring brown.  He’d probably be embarrassed if his hair was brown, too.  “Right now, that’s not really something I want to think about.”

“Why not?”

She glared, but it was a little soft.  How to explain it?  It was like being shot with a regular Blizzard spell rather than Blizzaga.  “You don’t want to know.”

“You can’t just say that!”  He protested.  “Now I’m just going to keep thinking about it!  And we’ve got a _long_ walk ahead.”

“So you’re just going to keep nagging me until I tell you,” she deadpanned.  “Don’t you think I’ve gone through enough for one day?”

“It’s just _hair._ If it was stupid, then I’ll just laugh for a while and then you can be mad at me.  Deal?”

She rolled her still-yellow eyes.  “Fine.  Maybe then you’ll understand why I was so worried about you stealing my light.”

Stealing her light?  What did that have to do with her hair?  Before he could ask, a shimmering rainbow glow surrounded her head.  When it disappeared, he gasped.

Her hair was jet black.

“Now _that’s_ uncanny,” he muttered, staring into her face.  If he were a few years older, and a girl… They could almost be the same person.  At the very least, they looked like close siblings.  The image was only emphasized by their similar suits, though hers was navy and magenta, his black and red.

“I know it shouldn’t matter.  I haven’t even kept my hair black since I became an apprentice,” she whispered.  “But now it feels like a reminder.  We’re not so different, Van.  Sometimes… that scares me.”

It was basically an insult, but he understood.  He had been terrified to become like Aqua.  If he chose to embrace the light, he just had so much to live up to.  Her fear was probably for much different reasons than that, but he could hardly blame her.

“I hope we’re not too different,” he whispered back.  “We can both have darkness, and light.”

Hesitantly, she nodded.  “Light… and darkness.”

The surreal image of her faded.  After an iridescent shimmer, blue eyes and hair again took their proper places.

“How do I look?”

He summoned his mask, but took it off for her to use as a mirror.  She held it close, smiling with relief.  “Thank you, Van.  Even if… it isn’t real.”

“I think that’s the most real you’ll ever be.”  He put his helmet back on, but dissolved the mask again.

“Why is that?” She asked.

“Because it shows who you _want_ to be.”

She considered that for a moment, then nodded.  He thought that was pretty dang wise, himself.  Maybe he should write a book.

He worried about her having the strength to power the Wayfinder after her dark episode, but the beam of light shot from it with no problems.  Well, if you didn’t could the darkness lurking at its core as a problem.

“Strangle it,” he said suddenly.

“What?”

He nodded towards the Wayfinder’s guiding ray.  “There’s darkness there.  I don’t know how it can exist so close to the light, but you have to keep a firm grip on it.  I should have explained it better earlier, but it’s hard to put in words.  I guess it’s like the opposite of what you said about using Curaga.  You have to force the darkness to do what you want.  Strangle it.”

“I- I’ll try.”  She swallowed.

“You _will._ You’re the best magic user I’ve ever met. Give yourself some credit.”

She blushed a little at the compliment, but nodded and focused on the path ahead.  Preparations finally finished, they summoned their keyblades and headed into the forest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m finding the Hamilton song “Non-Stop” very relatable right now. :P (“Why do you write like you’re running out of time?” “Because I procrastinated all summer and school starts in 3 weeks.”) Seriously though, I imagine this is what people feel like when they procrastinate writing an essay until 9:38pm, and it’s due at midnight. Only this is way more fun, don’t worry :P
> 
> Thought that kept popping into my head near the beginning of this chapter: “You teach me, and I’ll teach you! Po-ke-mon!” XD ^^;;
> 
> The big reveal!! Look, Aqua’s color powers actually became somewhat plot-relevant after all. Honestly that surprised even me. ^^;
> 
> At this point I’d say Vani’s about 16% light. (Creating Inversed actually doesn't take that much light, as Vanitas kind of mentioned in an earlier chapter.) No numbers on Aqua because spoilers.
> 
> Some things about using darkness and light were inspired by the magic system of Saidar and Saidin in the Wheel of Time series.


	20. Thinking like Darkness

True to Aqua’s word, plenty of opportunities arose for Vanitas to practice his magic.  Neoshadows skulked through the leafless forest, appearing from their pools to try to absorb the Wayfinder’s guiding ray of light.  Thankfully, when they actually touched it, the beam seared them and sent them recoiling away for a few moments before they were dumb enough to try again.  The real danger was when the monsters grew smart enough to lunge for the Wayfinder itself.  Vanitas and Aqua kept to a steady jog, with her leading the way with her charm, him diving back and forth through the ground to cover her flanks.  Tornado became his staple in a pinch; he had to blow the Heartless away on several occasions when too many attacked at once.  He tried to keep ahead of them though, sniping them from a distance with Blizzaga and Thundaga, Aqua giving pointers the whole time, as if they were in a classroom instead of running through the forests of hell.  He wasn’t complaining though; delivering the constant barrage of instructions gave her something to focus on rather than despair or anger.  She couldn’t use too much magic herself, not while also feeding the Wayfinder, but she could still deal serious damage with her keyblade when the Heartless inevitably got too close.

At first, the constant battle to move onward was invigorating; Vanitas appreciated the punching bags delivering themselves to him.  It kept him from getting too stuck in his head.  After what felt like hours with no breaks, however, his body started to drag.  Even the near constant flow of HP orbs couldn’t keep him going forever.

“Aqua,” he said, finally giving in to the exhaustion as he blasted the millionth Neoshadow that leapt at his face.  At this point, _millionth_ didn’t feel like an exaggeration.

“What?  Is Thundaga giving you trouble?  I find that one works best if you angle your keyblade slightly upward, like a lightning rod.”  She blocked a swipe from another Neoshadow, keeping her free hand firm on the charm hanging at her hip.

“What?”  He barely heard her over the sounds of his shotlock taking out a row of Heartless to his right.  Even using the dark beam, his easiest element, sucked too much of his magic dry.  “No, forget the magic.  I just need a break.”

“Oh.”  The Wayfinder’s beam winked out.  “I had hoped you would say that soon.”

“Why, ‘cause you were too proud to admit it first?”

They stood back to back now, keyblades bared.  With the guiding light gone, the Neoshadows’ eyes circled them like demonic lightning bugs.

“No,” she replied.  Her keyblade shot a wall of ice at the Heartless, breaking their perimeter. “It wasn’t pride.  I just didn’t want to listen to your bragging if you outlasted me.”

“Fair enough.”  He swung his blade, letting out bursts of Aeroga in an arc.  “I can still brag a little, though.  I _did_ do most of the fighting.”

“Only because it takes most of my energy to power the Wayfinder,” she defended, both verbally and physically – one of the Neoshadows had leapt her wall to duel her head-on.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”  He chugged a Hi-Potion, as much for the energy as the health.  The Heartless saw it as a moment of weakness, though, and a group of three lunged at once.  They caught his leg as he dropped the bottle and tried to cartwheel away.  Wincing, he kicked one in the face.  His foot seemed to sink in a ways, like the Neoshadow’s skin was made of mist, before connecting with something solid.  Certainly not as effective as a keyblade strike, but enough to stun it for a moment.  He righted himself and transitioned into a combo comprised mostly of stabs.

Eventually, with the Wayfinder no longer illuminated, the Heartless decided to make the smart decision and preserve their worthless existences.  They fled into the depths of the forest.

Vanitas sighed, plopping to the ground.  “Finally.  Those things are stubborn.”

Aqua sat down beside him, breaking out their makeshift pack of food that she had tied to her belt under her skirt.  It wasn’t much, just some Crystal Sugar, the one remaining Crystal Soda, and a squished Wedding Cake.  Still, having any food at all was something to be grateful for.

 “If it’s like this every day…”  She shook her head.  “I don’t know how we can possibly make it.”

“What are you talking about?  We’re the butt-kickingest team in the whole worlds.  The Heartless don’t stand a chance.”  His voice was full of bravado, but he felt the exhaustion pulling at him, as if the Void itself were trying to suck him in.  He hoped it didn’t show on his maskless face.

“Good as we are at… ‘kicking butt,’ the Heartless are _infinite._ There are only two of us.”  She poured half of the Crystal Soda into the Hi-Potion bottle he’d dropped and handed it to him.  “I’m not trying to be a pessimist, Van, and I don’t think this is the darkness speaking.  I just don’t know how we can do it.”

Ugh.  It was getting annoying having to play the optimist.  He was the one who’d actually fought most of the Heartless, anyway.

“Where’s your spiel about the light always beating the darkness?”  He huffed and took a swig of soda.

She gazed forlornly into the forest.  “I… I still want to believe that.  Does that make me naïve?”

The truth was, it did.  Clearly the darkness had won in several ways so far.  Against Terra, for one; trapping them here, for another. 

“Probably.”

She sighed, not touching her soda.  “It just seems so inevitable.  That no matter how hard we fight, this realm will fight harder.  We’re nothing to it.”

“Yep.  Might as well give up now.”  He flopped back, hands laced behind his head.

“We might as well – what?”  She scrunched her eyebrows at him.

“Hey, you said it, not me.  You’re ready to let the darkness roll right over you.”  He waved his arm in a dismissing motion.  “What do you want for your last meal?  Some of my Prize Pods drop Apple Pie.  Or would you rather have something savory?  Most of what I can make is sweet, but maybe with some Toonbasco or Bizzaro Beans…”

“Oh, come on!”  She put her fists on her hips.  “You really think I’d give up without a fight?”

“That’s what you said, isn’t it?”  He rolled up onto his side.  “There’s no point.  It’s inevitable.”

Her face colored.  “I can’t help that the thought comes to me.  That doesn’t mean I would give up.”

“Then don’t sound like you would.  That just shows the darkness you’re weak.  You gotta be stubborn with it, like I said.”

“But… you also said I can’t just resist it be leaving it alone.  I was plenty stubborn about not using it before, and it didn’t seem to help.”

He shook his head.  “That’s not what I meant.  If you accept that the darkness is there and that it’s dangerous, but you don’t let it intimidate you – if you tell it you’re gonna do what you want, and it can go to the Void for all you care – then you’ll have power over it.  It’s all about your mind, Aqua.  You can want to resist it all you want, but it will only work when you’re not afraid.”

“I… think you lost me again.”

He sighed in exasperation.  Everything about darkness was instinctive to him; all this explaining was giving him a headache.  He took another gulp of soda.  The sugar helped him think better.  “This time better make sense, okay?  Say the darkness is like a Heartless.”

“Heartless _are_ darkness,” she pointed out.

“I know, but it’s also a metaphor.  Shut up and let me explain.”  He summoned a tiny dark flame for emphasis; she flinched away from it.  Her fear wouldn’t be so easily cured.  “You’re fighting a Heartless.  What happens if you ignore it?”

“It sneaks up on you, and then it attacks.”  Good.  Combat analogies were something they both understood.

“Exactly.  And if you’re afraid of it, what happens?”

“You panic.  You don’t fight as well as if you were focused,” she replied, seeming to understand the implications.

“Two for two.  Finally, we’re getting somewhere.  Now, here’s the tricky part.  How _do_ you fight the Heartless?”

“Well… you would face it head-on.  You wouldn’t ignore it until it was too late, and you wouldn’t hide from it in fear.  You would believe you could win, and you would.”

He smiled.  “Just like you did with that giant keyblade-eating Heartless.  You already know what to do.”

“I… I do, don’t I?”  She grinned.

“Only took you three tries,” he replied, voice light.  “Now, shut up and eat your cake.” 

XXX

Vanitas kept second watch that night; Aqua looked rather proud when she woke him for his shift.  Maybe she had succeeded in fending off a nasty batch of Heartless by herself.  She certainly fell asleep quickly enough.

The forest was clear for now, which left him with time to think.  He had dodged Aqua’s question before, instead choosing to teach her how to fight her darkness, but now it tugged on him.  It was all well and good to _believe_ they could survive the Realm of Darkness, but how were they actually going to do it?  She was right, in a way.  He doubted they could keep going at this rate for long.  Distance was difficult to measure when weaving through the lifeless trees, but he was sure that today’s pace had been the slowest so far.

Today.  Day twenty, Aqua had told him, since her profession of friendship in the tunnels.  Had it only been that long?  Sometimes it felt as if they’d been fighting the darkness together for a lifetime.  It was easy to see how she could feel hopeless.  How many times had they almost died, or at least almost lost their minds, in the last twenty days?  How could they last even twenty more?

Neoshadows lurked beneath the trees; Vanitas shot off a few chunks of Blizzaga at them, and the ones that weren’t destroyed turned and fled.  Aqua stirred, but slept through the noise.

Back to thinking.  He twirled his keyblade absently, chain swinging through the air.  For the first time in a while, its aquamarine eyes seemed to watch him.  Maybe it was his mind’s way of personifying the darkness.  It would do him no good to think like that; he needed his keyblade ready in case of an attack, so he just stared right back into those lifeless eyes.  Show no fear.

There had to be a way of traveling the Realm of Darkness without fighting every single Heartless along the way….

 _“You would face it head-on.  You wouldn’t ignore it until it was too late, and you wouldn’t hide from it in fear.”_ That was how Aqua had described fighting Heartless, and she was right.  Usually.  But at this rate, fighting them _all_ head on would kill them.  Light was great and all, but for this challenge, Vanitas needed to do what he did best: think like the darkness.

Darkness didn’t start a fight head-on; it started cloaked in shadow, in stealth or ambush.  Vanitas himself didn’t always do that; dramatic entrances were too fun.  Regardless, if he were thinking like the darkness, he would dive underground like the Neoshadows and travel that way, only resurfacing to breathe.  Of course, he couldn’t tow Aqua along like that.

More Neoshadow eyes interrupted his thoughts; he went with Firaga spells to eliminate them this time, just to mix things up.  They were so stupid, hadn’t they realized by now that he would just—?

The sound of a Neoshadow emerging from its pool.  _Behind_ him.

He cursed as it lunged at him, swiping its claws through his chest.  There was no blood, not even a tear – dark suits couldn’t be damaged by the element they were made from – but it still hurt as bad as if it had left a gouge in him.  He bit down a cry at the icy pain, then sprung into action.

One Neoshadow didn’t stand a chance.  However, his pain seemed to attract more; yellow eyes slunk down into shadow-pools and surrounded him.

“Forget this,” he hissed.  A gang of Scrappers leapt from him, charging the Heartless.  Maybe not the strongest Unversed he could’ve summoned, but the choice hadn’t been conscious.  They outnumbered the Neoshadows, at least.  Together with his Unversed, Vanitas finished off the intruders and absorbed some needed HP orbs.  Reluctantly, he then destroyed his Unversed too.  The Hi-Potions and Panaceas they dropped would be useful.

He sat back down with a sigh.  What had he been thinking about?  How to avoid the Heartless, right.  Think like the darkness.

His fight with the Neoshadows gave him an idea:  what if he used a decoy?  Send an Inversed ahead, like the Heartless that had distracted him and allowed the one behind him to sneak up.  But the Wayfinder’s beam was so bright; could an Inversed’s light provide a tempting enough bait?  Probably not.

But were there other ways he could make use of his Inversed?  He still hadn’t had many opportunities to practice with them yet.  He had been so focused on practicing magic today, he had completely ignored them.

An idea came to him.  A crazy, potentially dangerous idea.  But it could work.

All he needed was an insane amount of positivity.

XXX

The next morning, Aqua tested Vanitas’s skill in using Curaga.  After deeming his improvement acceptable, with the promise that he’d keep practicing (as if he could _not_ use Curaga), she decided to teach him Esuna.  Since they could only test if it worked when one of them was afflicted by poison or another status ailment, he only learned it in theory, but it didn’t seem too hard.  At least he had a command in his deck for it now.

Aqua reluctantly let him teach her more about darkness.  Since the approach from the previous day had basically been a disaster, he only had her ‘look’ at the darkness this time.  It basically amounted to what he did when he searched for the proper emotions to create Unversed.  They felt at the darkness inside them, just keeping an eye on it, letting it know they were paying attention.  She said that it seemed to help, but she was probably just relieved she didn’t have to actively use it this time.

Only after all of that, while feasting on their breakfast of leftover Wedding Cake, did Vanitas make his announcement.

“I have a plan.”  He grinned, mouth full of cake.  She raised her eyebrows.

“Why do I get the feeling I won’t like this?”

“Hey, you don’t even know what the plan is yet!”  He protested.

“Alright then, enlighten me.”

“Can’t.”  He swallowed a handful of the spongey white dessert.  “It’s a surprise.”

She sighed.  “Then why did you bother telling me?”

He bounced to his feet, a new spring already in his step.  “Because I need your help.  I need all the positivity I can get right now.”

“All the… positivity?  Are you creating an Inversed?”

“Maybe.”  He smiled mischievously.  Of _course_ he was; what else was positivity good for?  Besides not feeling like a depressed pile of dirt.

“You already seem pretty positive to me.”  She remained sitting, brushing crumbs off of her lap.  “What do you expect me to do?”

Now, this was the hard part.  He didn’t just need _any_ kind of positivity. “I need you to help me feel like giving people stuff.  The opposite of being jealous.”

“You mean you need to feel generous?”  She asked.

“Yeah, sure.  How do I do that?”  Considering the only things he’d ever been generous in giving out were keyblades to the face, he didn’t have much experience.

“Hmm.  That’s awfully specific,” she mused.  “To be generous, you need people to give something to.”

“I know that.  I’ve got you.”  Duh. For some reason, she was surprised by that.  “What do you want?”

“Van, I don’t think you need to actually give me anything,” she protested.

“Of course I do!  Come on, Aqua, you’ve got to want _something.”_

She sighed.  “I want to get out of here.  Other than that, I really don’t know.”  He crossed his arms, bottom lip poking out a little.  “Oh, fine, Van.  Surprise me.”

Surprise her?  But what if he gave her something she didn’t want?  Then he wouldn’t be generous, would he?  Just like it wasn’t generous to throw trash on your neighbor’s porch.

He was prepared, though.  He had spent all night thinking about this, including what would happen if Aqua didn’t want anything. 

Commands were too ordinary; she had plenty of those.  He had discarded that idea from the start.  They had already eaten ice cream and s’mores together; he didn’t want to regift an old idea.  But food _was_ always the most solid option.

He summoned a Red Hot Chili – for once, the negativity took effort to reach.  Aqua hopped back at the sudden apparition, but had already snagged it from the air and tossed off its lid.  Much like its cousin, the Blue Sea Salt, it held the first ingredients of a recipe.

Aqua just stared, wide-eyed, as he dug out some ingredients he’d stuffed in his belt.  Probably not that sanitary, but she’d said fire killed germs, anyway.  He dropped a few Prickle Peppers, Bizzaro Beans, and Jumbo Almonds into the red-colored sauce.  Then, for some contrast of flavors, he added a Dancin’ Lemon.  It bounced around, sparking happily and nearly making his Unversed jump out of his hands.

Replacing the cap, Vanitas shook the Red Hot Chili like a giant maraca.  It heated in his hands as he did so.  “Here, you want to try?”

“…I think I’ll let you handle it this time.”

He shrugged.  He’d offered; that was probably generous enough.  When he was satisfied with his shaking, he knelt by Aqua and pinned the Unversed to the ground with a weak Bind spell.  “Ta-da!”

Aqua blinked at his concoction.  The red sauce had turned orange and a little lumpy; that was probably just the beans.  There were also little sparks of electricity bouncing around in it.  He was sure that would be perfectly safe, though.  Everything his Prize Pods spit out was edible, right?

“You’re going to eat it, right?”  He asked eventually.  “Trust me, it’s good.”  Not that he knew from actual experience – he hadn’t been able to create many Prize Pods without risking waking Aqua, so he hadn’t wasted any ingredients on a test batch.  But he figured their ice cream and s’mores had both been fantastic successes, so this was bound to be good.  All chili was was throwing a bunch of stuff in a pot anyway.

“…Of course, Van.”  She gave him a weak smile, then swiped a finger through the goopy liquid.  After eyeing it warily, she stuck it in her mouth.  Her face looked… well, shocked.  “It’s certainly, um, exciting,” she remarked after swallowing.

“If ‘exciting’ is another word for _awesome.”_ He grinned and shoved a handful in his mouth.

His taste buds exploded in a blast of fire and lightning.  His vision swam momentarily; his tongue went numb.  He barely had enough control of his face to yelp and spit the concoction out.

“Ah!  Awwah!  Wawah!”  He pointed desperately to his face.

Barely holding in a laugh, Aqua interpreted his gibberish and sprayed water into his open mouth.  The flames finally cooled, and he exhaled in relief.  After swallowing the water, of course.

Aqua sprayed her own mouth, swishing it around before swallowing.  “’Awesome,’ huh?”

“…It’s a work in progress,” he relented.  He hoped the heat in his face was just from the awful chili, and not his blush.  “This stinks.  How am I supposed to be generous _now?”_

“Well, generosity doesn’t necessarily mean you have to give something physical,” she explained while stretching her legs out in front of her.  “In fact, I think the most generous people give something more than that.”

“What do you mean?  What do they give?”  He asked with a frown.

“They give of themselves.  Their memories, their time, their hearts.”

Had he done that?  He had given his friendship to Aqua, and certainly his time.  But he felt down to his emotions, and knew there wasn’t enough generosity there yet.  So what else could he give?

“Memories,” he muttered.  “Why would you want those?”

“To better know who you are,” she said with a smile.  “That’s something friends usually share.  We’re all made up of memories.  They’re part of what connects us.”

He grimaced.  “My memories… you really don’t want me to share those.”

“Why not?”  She asked.

 “I’m trying to build up some positivity here.  No matter what you want me to share from my life before, it’s not going to be pretty.”  He wrapped his arms around himself.  Those days with Xehanort, being beaten and spreading Unversed… they felt so far away now.  He wanted them to stay that way.

“Oh.  I understand, Van.  I’m sorry.”  Tentatively, as if afraid he would bite her, she placed an arm around him.  He flinched for a moment, not sure what she was doing, but it felt… comforting. Safe.  He decided not to shake her off.

“All my best memories are from this place.  How pathetic is that?”  He shook his head.  “But we can’t stay here.  Not when it’s killing you.”

“Van…  I would say _that’s_ what makes you generous.”  She looked into his eyes.  Hers were the right color again, a deep blue.  Sometimes when she turned her head, he still imagined them glinting gold.  “You could have survived here.  You’ve even listed the benefits of staying.  There’s really nothing left for you in the Realm of Light, is there?”

Slowly, he shook his head.  Once he returned, once he set foot in the light… he would have no purpose again.  While his light might be growing, it would be negligible there.  He would go back to being little more than a shadow.

“Yet you’ve still done all of this for me.  You’ve protected me, with no benefit to yourself.  Against your very nature, you’ve helped me resist the darkness.”

“That doesn’t count.  I’ve gotten something out of all that,” he countered.

“What’s that?”

He smiled a little.  “I got you as a friend.”

It was so sappy, he could’ve thrown up.  But it was also true.

Aqua smiled back.  “And I got you.  So it _does_ count.”

His heart warmed.  If it did count… if he really had given enough of himself…  No, it was more that that.  It wasn’t just that he had given in the past, but that he was willing to keep giving.  And he was.  That was what he was doing now, by trying to create this Inversed.

He reached down to his emotions again, and this time felt a well of positivity there that might just be big enough.

“You might want to stand back,” he told her.  She gave him a last pat on the back before standing and finding a secure place behind a tree.

Light began to spill from his hands.  He pictured himself giving it up, allowing it to flow, like Aqua had taught him.  If it worked for Cure spells, maybe that would help with the Inversed too.  He did seem to breathe easier throughout the process.

The most important part would be to keep any jealousy out of his creation.  Just a few drops, and it might corrupt it into an Unversed that wouldn’t be safe near Aqua.  As the light began to coalesce into a giant sphere, he exhaled.  Exhaled his envy of Ventus, for the life of comfort he had lived.  His envy of Aqua, for her strength that always surpassed his.  His envy of who he had once been, for being able to think only of himself.  These feelings might not entirely go away, but they could at least be roped off, pushed aside.  He replaced them with a desire to give something.  To do something that would really matter.

The orb of light grew, pulsing outward, until it was taller than him.  Four bright tendrils spiraled from its base, taking the shape of wheels.

“Oh, no,” Aqua groaned.  “I know this Unversed.”

“Inversed,” he corrected, hands dropping to his sides as the creature finished forming.  The Cursed Coach had been a clear choice for traveling the Realm of Darkness in style.  He might have to call it the Blessed Coach now, though that name sounded a little clunky. 

The original Unversed had been inspired by someone else’s jealousy, so now that he was using only his own emotion, it was easy to create a few specific modifications.  Instead of a barred mouth and crying eyes, the carriage’s side had one long window running across it.  The Inversed’s real eyes, now a soft blue, stayed on the top of the pumpkin-like stem.

The Blessed Coach bounced happily, whirling in front of him as if to ask how it could be of service.

Aqua crept out from behind her tree, keyblade bared defensively.  “I am _not_ getting in that thing.”

Heartless eyes appeared in the distance, attracted by the Inversed’s light.

“Bet you will.”  He smirked, grabbing one of the carriage’s vinelike arms.  It tossed him in through the window.  Fortunately, the Inversed had conformed to his mental image, and there were squishy seats inside.

“Vanitas!”  She called, then whirled around as the Neoshadows approached.  The Blessed Coach tried to scoop her to safety with its vines, but she swatted them away.

He reached his head and arm out the window.  “You coming or not?”

She growled.  “This is – this is _insane.”_

“Yeah, yeah, what else is new?”

With a glare etched into her face, she reached for his hand.  He had to use both to pull her up, nearly falling out of the carriage himself.  Finally, as the Neoshadows closed in, the Inversed lurched into motion, rolling over and crushing the unfortunate Heartless as it barreled through the forest.

“See ya, suckers,” he laughed with his head out the window.  Aqua moaned from her seat, clutching her stomach.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” she muttered.  He took the opportunity to try an Esuna spell on her.  She blinked at the tiny diamonds of light surrounding her – not a strong spell, but it would do for carriage-sickness.  “Thanks.  But I still don’t like this.”

He just stayed grinning out the window, watching the forest fly by.  “Complain all you want, but get that Wayfinder of yours powered up.  We’re finally getting out of here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This feels more like a bridge chapter, not something I would usually want to write for a milestone like chapter 20. But oh well. At least we got to see Van growing his light a little more, now that we’ve seen Aqua and her darkness for the past few chapters.
> 
> I’m really hoping it should pick up fast after this. I know I said only four or five more chapters a few chapters ago, but I’m hoping that now there should actually only be four or so more chapters.
> 
> Also, I forgot to mention it before, but deciding to make Aqua’s hair black didn’t really come from the poll, it mostly came because it fit cool in the story, providing another link between her and Vanitas. But I’m glad so many people thought that was a good idea C: Originally I toyed with the idea of making her hair brown, since that’s the only normal hair color we haven’t seen from a female protagonist yet. (Kairi=red, Xion=black, Naminé=blonde). Another note, Aqua had mentioned that her hair was boring/normal on her world, if Vanitas had been paying more attention and made the connection he probably would’ve been really offended that she thought black was a lame hair color. :P
> 
> Vanitas’s explanation about darkness was inspired by what Naminé-disguised-as-Kairi (I think) tells Riku in CoM: “Know that the darkness is there and don't give in. If you do that, you will gain strength---the kind that's unlike any other.” That was the closest canon explanation I could find that wasn’t just “kill it with friendship” or something.


	21. Sleeping Secrets

To Aqua’s credit, she only threw up twice that day.  The first spooked the Blessed Coach into a frenzy; it took off even faster, only slowing to a safe pace once she washed its floor with a powerful spray of water.  The second time she managed to get her head out the window first, giving the Darkball flying alongside them a nasty surprise.  By the time she was about to throw up a third time, they had left the emaciated woods far behind and were cruising across a stone plain latticed with cracks.  The cracks were more like small gorges - each only a little less wide than Vanitas was tall - but the Blessed Coach could jump them without difficulty.  There were some advantages to having a carriage with some degree of sentience.

Once they landed on a platform larger than most of the others, Vanitas patted the inside of his Inversed, signaling it to slow down.  It bounced a little, happy at his attention, before lurching to a stop.  He stuck his head out the left window and vaporized the few Darkballs and Wyverns that had managed to keep up with them. After they were gone, Aqua let out the breath she’d been holding and practically dove out the opposite window.

“Hey, watch it with that thing!”  Vanitas had to remind her.  She barely remembered to turn off her Wayfinder.  Its ray might guide them home, but it would also hurt his Inversed (and himself) if they touched it.  He had created a special window in the Blessed Coach just for the beam to escape through.

She barely mumbled a “Sorry,” excited as she was to put feet on land again.  As if a personal carriage ride was less luxurious than grinding their way through hordes of Heartless on foot.

“Don’t mind her.  You did good,” he murmured to the Inversed, placing a hand on its silky smooth outside.  It rubbed up against him with its pumpkin-shaped body and hugged him with its arm-vines.  “Hey, hey! Just ‘cause I didn’t call you an idiot doesn’t mean you can squeeze me to death!  We’ll give you a chance to play again tomorrow.”

While it was still hugging him, he absorbed its positivity.  Absorbing that much at once hit him like a wave of cold water - refreshing but overwhelming at the same time.  He stumbled and took a deep breath to regain his balance.

“Any chance we’ve got some food left?”  He asked Aqua, who was standing near the edge of the stone pillar, staring off into space.  “Aqua?”

“Come here; you should see this,” she called to him.  When he approached, he saw that her face was troubled.

Then he saw what she was looking at, and realized why.  They had been moving too quickly to tell while in the Coach, but a dark black mist wafted up from the chasms between the platforms.  The second after he saw it, the nauseating stench hit his nose. He swallowed, breathing more shallowly after that.

“We’re in the Realm of Darkness, Aqua. _Surprise,_ there’s darkness.”

“But it looks just like…”

“It looks just like the Dark Wind, yeah.”  He forced himself to say it without hesitating.  “Until I hear it talking about itself in the plural, I’m going to assume it’s just regular darkness.  After all, the darkness you gave off looks about the same.” Hers was a little more violet than pure black, but otherwise it would be impossible to tell the difference.

Her face shadowed at that, and not just because there was darkness wisping up beneath it.  “I'm just trying to be cautious.  For all we know, those chasms lead straight back to the Underground.”

He shook his head.  “I doubt it.  We could see the ceiling the whole time.”

“But we obviously didn’t travel the whole length of it.  Who knows how far it went, or what else was down there?”  She shuddered.  “I’m not sure we should sleep here tonight.”

“I would agree with you, but where else are we going to go?”  He waved an arm towards the horizon, which extended flatly in all directions, like they were standing at the center of a shattered plate.  “You can’t power the Wayfinder forever.  I probably shouldn’t have made you go on that long, what with you--”

“I’m fine,” she interrupted, though she didn’t protest when he cast Esuna over her for the tenth time today.  If she’d played her cards smarter, she could’ve pretended her ‘motion sickness’ was an excuse for him to practice magic.  “Your form is still off.  Your arm needs to extend straight into the air, not towards me.”

“What’s it matter?” He asked, a little annoyed.

“There are certain side effects to not casting a spell perfectly.  For example, your mistake there gave me short-term insomnia.  I might as well take first watch.”

“Oh,” he replied guiltily.  “Whoops.”

She ignored him, striding to the other side of the platform and sitting down cross-legged, her back facing him.  What had gotten her suit in a twist?  He hoped her darkness wasn’t flaring up again.  In spite of the mediocre lessons he’d taught her, he really wasn't sure how to keep her darkness at bay permanently - if that was even possible.  Their best bet was to get her out of here before any lasting damage was done.  

If it wasn’t too late for that already.

Sighing, he laid down on the unforgiving ground and summoned his helmet.  His hair made a better pillow when shoved into the smaller space.

He fell into a fitful sleep, worries about Aqua’s darkness still pinballing around in his mind.

XXX

_“What are you doing?  I told you to take care of her!  Something’s wrong… Vanitas!  Wake up!”_

What the… what was that voice?  His eyes shot open, but he saw nothing. Literally nothing - nothing but blackness.  Had he suddenly gone blind?  Or had someone used a Blackout command on him?  

No, the blackness shifted, moved with an imaginary wind.  Fog.  Just fog… really dark fog, but what did he expect?

He thought about trying to clear it with Aeroga, but was afraid he might blow Aqua off of the platform in the process.  Instead he summoned his keyblade, tapping it in front of him like a blind man’s cane.

“Aqua?”  He called.  No response, as usual.  Why was it that every time he called for her, he was already too late?  It would be too much to hope that she had fallen asleep on guard duty.

He nearly whacked her in the face when he finally stumbled upon her, laying down and shaking violently.

“Esuna,” he cast, hoping it would work as well on Aqua’s strange recurring sickness as it did on her earlier nausea.  He even remembered to hold his keyblade up perfectly straight this time.  The glowing diamonds gently rained around her, and she stilled. However, when he felt her forehead, it was still blazing hot.  Biting down a curse, he dug a Panacea from his belt.  The strange red pot wasn’t one he’d used often; it took him a moment to unscrew the lid.  Inside, rather than a liquid like a potion, was a pinkish salve.  Aqua began to shiver again as he gooped it out and slathered it across her face.

She coughed and sluggishly ran her fingers down the side of her cheek, leaving a three parallel trails. Those began to disappear as the goop dissolved into her skin.  “Ugh.  Panacea?  Esuna didn’t work?”

“Mine didn’t, at least,” he muttered.  Would he ever get the hang of healing magic?  Their lives could literally depend on the answer.  In the meantime, he’d have to kill some more Scrappers.

She blinked her eyes open.  “It’s still here… the darkness.  It rose out of the chasms while you were sleeping.  That's the last thing I remember.”

He cast Aeroga, blowing some of the fog away momentarily, but it quickly swirled back to its original suffocating position.  As it returned, he felt a surge of anger.  Not his own.  As if the _mist itself_ was angry.  It swirled more violently, whipping across his face.  Reflexively he tried to blast it away again, but it only pressed down on him, heavy, like an evil wool blanket.

“Alright, this isn’t good.”  He said while trying to keep his mouth as closed as possible.

“I might have enough magic to do something,” she said, sitting up.  “Cast Aeroga again.”

He followed her instructions, grateful that Aero was the one element she never saw the need to correct.  Once the air around them was clear, Aqua threw up her hands, summoning a domelike barrier, a larger version of the kind she sometimes used in battle.

“I can hold it… for a little while.”  She winced.  “Do you believe this is connected to the Dark Wind now?”

“It hasn’t started talking yet, has it?”  

She grunted.  Maybe it hadn’t started talking, but it did seem to be trying to pierce her barrier.  The formless tendrils of mist wove together, spiraling into thicker, sharper tentacles.

“Doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous,” he relented, already working on summoning an Inversed.  It was harder to grab hold of the positivity in an emergency, with spikes of mist jabbing towards their sanctuary, but he closed his eyes and forced his fear aside.  Thankfully, the emotions the Blessed Coach had left behind were still close to the surface.

“My Inversed won’t fit in here with us,” he warned.  “Be ready to break when I give the signal.”

She groaned under the weight of her barrier and the force pressing on it.  “What’s the signal?”

His orb of light expanded as quickly as he dared.  “The signal is _now!”_

“Now?”

“Yes, now!   _Go!”_

The barrier shattered, just as the Blessed Coach swelled to its full size.  Wheels spiraled out; windows appeared.  He and Aqua dove in as the darkness rushed for them.

The Coach swerved into motion, but it wouldn’t be able to see in this malevolent fog.  They would die as easily from crashing into a chasm just as they would from suffocating under this darkness.

Risking his head out the window, Vanitas cast Tornado with a yell.  The fog recoiled from it, fleeing and leaving a path in front of them.  Revealing the chasm coming up on them way too quickly.

Aqua kept her head on straight - she leaned out the window herself, keyblade gripped in both hands, and released a controlled blast of Blizzaga.  The ice closed the gap between the platforms, smooth enough for the Blessed Coach to roll over, strong enough to hold their weight.

Vanitas laughed, punching a fist in the air.  “Aqua, that was _awesome!”_

She slumped in the carriage’s seat, breathing heavily.  “You’re welcome.  Do you by any chance have an Ether?”

He shook his head.  He had yet to recover any from the Heartless, and hadn't destroyed enough Unversed lately to find some from them.

She sighed.  “I hope we’re going the right way, then.  I won’t be able to power the Wayfinder again until I’ve had some rest.”

“Alright.  Try to sleep, I’ll guide the Coach and keep clearing the way with Tornado.  Long as we get out of these plains, I don’t really care which way we go right now.”

“I agree.  Though I don’t know how well I’ll be able to sleep, with _that_ out there.  And all this bouncing.”

The Coach jumped a chasm just then, making his stomach drop and proving her point.

“I think you’ll sleep just fine,” he said with a wry grin.

And then he cast Sleep on her.

XXX

Juggling a Tornado, a crazy sentient pumpkin-cart, vengeful fog, and a sleeping Aqua turned out to be harder than he’d thought.   _He_ ended up needing some Ethers, and since they were inside the Inversed, he had to create and destroy other Inversed to find some.  Not an easy task by itself, much less while barreling ahead at full speed and constantly refreshing his wind spell.  There were some near-misses where he had to slash through mist-tentacles reaching in the windows - they dissolved back into mindless fog for a moment when separated - but in the end, they escaped the cracked slab of rock.  The fog seemed confined to a short distance from the gorges; when they burst through onto unbroken ground, they left it behind.

Of course, that brought new problems: namely, Heartless.  Those were much more easily dealt with, though.  Even the Coach itself could strangle and trample the Shadows, Neoshadows, and Possessors that crowded this new section of the Realm of Darkness.

Grabbing Aqua around the waist, he absorbed the Blessed Coach as soon as he could, and he managed to land them both on their feet.  Well, his feet; Aqua dangled uselessly in an upright position.  He laid her down before springing into attack.  It felt good to just bash on the Heartless again, blade through their chests, rather than having to snipe them off with magic.

He created a few Blue Sea Salts, hoping that along with helping him fight, they would drop some Mega-Ethers.  Together they made short work of the Heartless that stuck around.  A few of the Unversed were killed in the process, but he suppressed the pain and scooped up the Shimmering Crystals and Mega-Ethers he was lucky enough to get.

Aqua snored faintly.  Had his Sleep spell really been that good?  That would be a first.

He sat down beside her, deciding to wait a little longer before waking her up, even though he was impatient for her to use the Wayfinder again and tell if he’d picked the right direction.  There were no black trees in sight, so that was a good sign.  The path in the distance instead wound through pillars of stone streaked with a radioactive blue glow.  The monoliths stuck from the ground at odd angles, some nearly standing straight, some looking ready to topple over.  No, that wasn’t right - they weren’t sticking from the ground, but from a formless void.  A narrow, winding path hovered among the pillars, their only way forward.

“ _That_ looks safe,” he muttered.  The Coach had maneuvered turns well enough in the forest; hopefully it could keep its wheels on this road.

But first, rest.  After using all that magic, and after trying to keep his Inversed from getting spooked… well, he was ready to snore as loudly as Aqua.

Maybe he could risk sleeping at the same time.  They had slept without keeping watch before the tunnels, and nothing had happened.  Thanks to their dark suits, the Heartless mostly ignored them, so long as they didn't use any light.  He doubted his dreams would be good enough to summon Inversed this time.

That reminded him… what had that voice been, right before he woke up?  He could’ve sworn it was Ventus, but that seemed crazy.  Then again, he _had_ talked to him inside his heart that one time… Maybe his other half was still closer than he’d thought.

He laid down near Aqua, wondering if he could go back to that place in his dreams.  Ventus had given him some answers before; maybe he could help him figure out what was going on with Aqua.

As he was about to close his eyes, she rolled onto her side, curling in on herself.  And then he heard a voice that made his hair stand on end.

_“Yesss,”_ Aqua murmured in her sleep.  “ _Clossser…”_


	22. Vanishing Days

Day Twenty-Two.

Aqua woke up fine.  No strike of the mysterious illness, no sign of muttering in her sleep.  Vanitas could almost convince himself he’d imagined the whole thing.  It had been only two words, after all.  And he thought it had said “closer.”  They were nearing the edge of the Realm of Darkness; Aqua said she could feel it in the way the Wayfinder pulsed.  Why would the Dark Wind want that?  Though, at the same time, the thread of darkness at the center of its light was growing wider and wider...

He didn't share his worries.  She couldn’t do anything about them.  Navigating the terrain that day took all of their energy, anyway.  They nearly fell off of the path when Darkballs dive-bombed the Coach, only being saved by a quick Bind spell from Aqua that glued their wheels in place.

The terrain leveled off by the time they slept that night.  He kept first watch, waiting for any signs of danger from her as much as from the night surrounding them.  When it was his turn to sleep, he again tried to reach out to Ventus, but it was as vain as his name.

XXX

Day Twenty-Three.

The sky finally began to lighten to a deep purple, streaked with black lightning.  Where it struck, Heartless gathered, feasting on the remnants of… something.  Was this where new hearts consumed by darkness appeared?

There were too many Heartless here even to drive through; the ground was flat enough that Aqua was sure she could keep their course while extinguishing the Wayfinder.  They strolled through the lightning-charred land unchallenged, as if they were just another pair of Heartless.  Just like Heartless, they didn’t speak.

The unease of being surrounded by the monsters remained with them, even as they crossed into a land of jagged rocks that was less inhabited.  They barely spoke that night - except for the hissing words Vanitas imagined he heard from Aqua’s mouth as she slept.

The fear was getting harder and harder to shove down.

XXX

Day Twenty-Nine.

When would it end?

They fell into a routine.  Teach each other magic each morning, drive or fight Heartless on foot each day, sleep in rotations at night.  The darkness dominated their lives.  It was growing harder and harder to keep the Blessed Coach going; it became sluggish with his draining positivity.  He tried to think of things he could do for Aqua to regain it, but she didn’t seem interested in anything.  Attempts at conversation died off more and more quickly. 

He swore the gold in her eyes was beginning to peek through the blue.

XXX

Day Thirty-One.

“Something has to change,” Vanitas decided that night, when they made camp on a floating platform of stone.  A _sideways_ floating pillar of stone.  Gravity was just as messed up as everything else here.

“Huh?  What?”  Aqua asked, shaking away a blank stare.

“Something has to change.  We can’t go on like this.”  He scooted closer to the hovering Fira, which he had been allowed to make this time.  Mainly because Aqua had been too numb to do it first, and he had been too cold to wait.  Chunks of ice crusted the “bottoms” of all the floating rocks here.

She sighed and shook her head.  “Have I been doing something wrong, Van?  I’m trying to push away the darkness.  I do the exercises like you say.  I haven’t wanted to talk about it, but… I don’t think it’s working very well anymore.”

“It’s not that,” he said, though her darkness _had_ been growing.  Even through the suit, he could smell it.  Not that he smelled her darkness, exactly, but her normal smell of fresh cotton and warmth was slowly fading.  He had sniffed her hair while she slept each night to check.  “You’re doing everything you can about the darkness.  I know.  I just want…”

“Want what?”  She asked.  He felt his face redden and wished his mask was on.

“I know things can’t be exactly the way they were, not yet.  But I at least want us to laugh again,” he said, forcing himself to keep his voice firm.  He didn’t need to be embarrassed. They were friends, however empty they had both begun to feel.  He had to cling to that. There wasn’t anything else to hold on to.

“I… would like that,” she replied, voice hollow.  “But I’m not sure I know how anymore.”

He scooted closer to her, which was a disorienting experience on their sideways platform.  What felt like sliding to his left looked like he should be plummeting down.  “Come on, Aqua.  If I can learn to be happy, anyone can, right?”

“...Right,” she agreed quietly.  “I’m sorry, Van.  I’m not giving up, I promise.  I will keep being strong.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me. I get it. I’ve been thinking, though.  You can’t leave the darkness alone, but focusing on it all the time can’t be healthy, either.   _That’s_ what we need to change.”

She frowned thoughtfully.  “What do you suggest, then?”

“Remember when you asked about my memories?”  He asked.

“Yes.  You weren’t very happy about that.”

“That’s because all my memories suck.   _You_ have happy memories, Aqua.  Do you think it would help you to talk about them?”  This thought had taunted him for a few days; he had tried to ignore it.  Aqua’s memories would be full of Ventus and Terra, things that would only make him envy her.  But it was the only idea he had that might make her feel better.

“...Maybe,” she considered.  Her arms wrapped around herself, a protection from her fears as well as the cold.  “I’ll need your help, though.  Trying to remember my life before… it’s getting more and more difficult.  If you ask me a specific question, I could give you a better answer.”

That was fair.  Luckily, he had a question already.  “Alright.  What did it feel like when you became a Keyblade Master?”

“When I became a Keyblade Master?”  She repeated with a smile.  “I had studied and trained for my exam for years, always looking forward to that day.  When the Master finally said those words…”

Her face suddenly darkened, her voice hanging in the air.  “What?”  He asked.  He'd yearned to be a master ever since his creation, no, even before, when he and Ventus were one.  Xehanort had always said he'd get to be a master when he forged the X-Blade.  Clearly Aqua had felt the same longing he had, so what was wrong?

“...I was heartbroken.”  She shivered.  Her arms wrapped more tightly around herself.  “It would have been different if Terra had received his Mark of Mastery too.  We would have traveled the worlds together.  Instead, it drove a rift between us.  That was when everything changed.”  She fingered her Wayfinder.  “That was the last night we slept beneath the same stars.”

“...Oh.”  What else could he say?  He still wasn’t good at this comforting thing.  Sometimes he could get the words right, but more often he couldn’t.  That was why he had let her grow so distant this past week; he had been afraid of making things worse.  Apparently he’d done that anyway.

She had put her arm around him once to comfort him; maybe the same thing would help her.  He reached around her waist, since that was closer to his level than her shoulders.  It was one of those times he envied her height.

She stiffened, but eventually leaned her head against his.  Her soft scent wrapped around him, dampened but still clean.  He remembered when that scent had once been strong enough to sear the insides of his nose.

“It was because he used darkness, you know,” she told him quietly.  “That made him unfit to be a master.  If that was the case… then I’m no longer fit to be a keyblade master, either.”

“Yes you are,” he argued.  “You’re a stronger master than either Eraqus _or_ Xehanort.  You know the power of light and darkness both.  With that power, you’ll find Terra again,” he said, at least sounding sincere.  Sure, he had no way of knowing she’d see her friend, or if he was even still alive, but he’d lied plenty of times before.  At least this time he was lying for a good cause.  Still, it hurt his heart to think of her reuniting with Terra, leaving him behind.

_She probably wouldn’t be so depressed if she was stuck with_ him.   _Or with Ventus, for that matter._   He kept the bitter thoughts to himself.

A tear dripped from her eye.  “Yes.  I _will._ I will find him and Ventus again.  I will survive.  For them.”

_And for me?_ He wanted to ask.  But he didn’t.

She fell asleep against his shoulder that night.  Thankfully, no whispers of darkness escaped in her sleep this time.

_You’re mine for now, at least._ That would have to be enough.

XXX

Day Thirty-Two.

Aqua had woken in a better mood.  More determined, at least.  She attacked her practice against the darkness with an almost vicious energy.  This time, she seemed almost excited to release it in a blast that destroyed the nearby Heartless and singed Vanitas’s face.  At least his Curaga spell had improved enough to heal himself without much trouble.

They leapt between the floating rocks, gravity shifting to pull their feet towards whichever one was closest.  The constant flux of forces was disorienting, but somehow Aqua managed it with less nausea than when they’d ridden in the carriage.  Not too many Heartless could navigate the strange path, so the Wayfinder’s light wasn’t much of an issue.

Vanitas refused to let yesterday’s failure deter him.  When they set up their Fira inside a shallow cave, he asked for another memory.  One he would probably regret.

“What made Terra and Ventus so special?”

“Excuse me?”  She asked, probably blindsided by the sudden question.

“Why did you choose to be their friends?  Other than that they were the only other apprentices you knew.”  Maybe that was the only reason.  After all, Aqua had basically become his friend here because there were no other options.

She raised her eyebrows.  “You actually want to know?  This isn't some trick to make fun of them?”

He shrugged.  “It’s just a question.  Humor me.”

“Alright, then…” She still looked skeptical, but she went on.  “I met Terra first, of course.  He was already the Master Eraqus’s apprentice when they found me.  We were only around ten years old, and - well, he was insufferable at first.”  She chuckled a little through her smile; Vanitas’s heart leapt.  Maybe his stupid idea would help after all.  “He didn’t like the idea of another apprentice taking the Master’s attention.  Particularly one who was a girl, and who advanced more quickly at magic than him.  We were more rivals than friends until we had to work together to defeat a giant Heartless that had found a way to cross between Realms.  I think that was the first time we appreciated each other’s help.  Soon after that, our rivalry became more friendly, and we started to teach each other rather than keep our advantages to ourselves.  He was still overly competitive, but eventually he grew out of that… mostly.”

He took a swig of Rocket Soda.  He’d created some Inversed Prize Pods when they’d made camp; he’d barely been able to summon enough positivity.  Mostly it had been an attempt to cheer up Aqua, but the food didn't seem to have the same natural effect on her that it did him.  She wasn’t interested in the Sky Blue Mousse or Forest Muffins this time.  Apparently she _was_ interested in talking about Terra, though.

“Funny,” he mumbled.  “I figured you two were born attached at the hip.”

“I’ve found most friendships don't start that way,” she said with a wry smile.  “Ven and I, though, that would be the closest.  He was so innocent when he came to the Land of Departure.  When he finally awoke, he had lost his memory.  I still remember teaching him how to cook pancakes.  His whisking was a little too energetic; there was batter everywhere that day...” She trailed off, a cloud suddenly overtaking her eyes. “He was the little brother I never had. I should have been able to protect him…”

“Not your fault he decided to be an idiot,” Vanitas replied before his brain could catch up with his mouth.  The words sparked a thunderous glare from Aqua.

“Perhaps not.  Of course, the fault was mostly yours.”

He flinched under her gaze, feeling like a speck of dirt ground under a boot.  It was true, of course. He had needed to break that loser in.  He couldn't regret it - to regret it would be to regret the path that took him here, to Aqua.

A Mandrake peeled from his back, proving that he did regret something:  the pain he had caused her.  He strangled its neck in his fist, welcoming the agony it brought.  At least that was mostly physical.

“...I talked with Ventus,” he finally decided to say, as the darkness wreathed back into his arm.

The shadow retreated from her eyes.  “You… what?”

“He spoke to me.  In a… dream.  We’re still connected.”  He frowned, tapping his soda bottle against his leg.  “He told me to take care of you.”

She raised her eyebrows.  “He did, did he?”

“Yeah.  So you could say he’s forgiven me, I guess.”  He shrugged, turning his back to her.  “I only hope that one day you’ll do the same.”

He stood, strode to the other side of the cave, and sat back down.  The Fira cast his shadow across the wall, a jagged, leaping specter.

“Vanitas… Van…” Aqua’s voice carried a tinge of regret.  

This time, he didn’t particularly care to make her feel better.

XXX

Day Thirty-Three.

Vanitas couldn’t create the Blessed Coach.  All his generosity for his companion had faded like her dying scent, replaced by jealousy for her lost friends.  Terra.  Ventus.  The ones who clearly still held the whole of her heart.

Aqua didn’t ask questions.  She silently pulled out the Wayfinder, cradling it in her hands.

The glow didn’t appear - but static sparks of darkness did, startling her into dropping it.  Apparently both of them were out of luck.  And light.

“No… it… it has to work…” Her voice was hollow.  Her eyes flickered gold.

“Tch.  As if light _has_ to do anything.”  He kicked his empty soda bottle across the cave.  “Now if we were working with darkness, we could force it to do whatever we wanted.  Darkness obeys whoever’s the strongest.  And that’s us.”  Too bad they didn’t know how to make the darkness lead them into the light.

“I don’t feel very strong right now.”  She sat back down, picking up the Wayfinder like it might bite her.  “Van… did you really talk to Ven?”

Of course it would be about that.  For a second, he’d thought she was going to apologize.  “No, I just lied because I want to make you even _more_ mad at me,” he replied sarcastically. She ignored it. 

“Did he sound alright?  I mean, if some part of him could reach you at all… maybe you’re the key to bringing him back.”

“Maybe I don’t _want_ to bring him back!”  Vanitas snapped.  “He’s all you care about, isn’t he?  Him and Terra.  I’m just a placeholder.”

“Van, that is _not_ it,” she asserted, fists tight.

“Isn’t it?”  He spat back.  “Don’t deny it.  You’d kill to have them here instead of me.”

“No.”  She kept her voice calm this time.  “If that were the case, I would be dead.”

“You—” He cut off, processing her words in the middle of his retort.  “Why?  Because you would’ve sacrificed yourself for them already?”

“No.  Because as much as I love Terra and Ven, they couldn’t protect me in this place the way that you have.”

He sat down slowly, eyes narrow as he listened to her.

“You’ve helped me control the darkness.  Not so much through your lessons – I’m not sure how much those have helped, if I’m honest – but through your example.  You’ve proved that darkness _can_ be fought.  You gave me this suit, too, and without that the Heartless would have destroyed me already.”

“So you’re just my friend because I’ve kept you alive,” he muttered.

She huffed in exasperation, then struggled to calm herself.  “Van, we’re friends because we _care_ about each other.  We see the good in each other, and we try to help each other overcome the bad. 

“Sometimes, overcoming takes a little longer than others.  I need you to be patient with me.  Try to understand how hard this is for me, dealing with darkness for the first time – I’m not myself.  I have forgiven you plenty of times; I hope you can do the same for me, should I have any more outbursts.”

“…That’s fair,” he finally conceded, the memories of his own acerbic words coming back to sting him.  “I’m… sorry too.”  He sighed.  “Being mad at you sucks.”

Aqua laughed a little and scooted over to hug him.  “I accept your apology.  I don’t enjoy staying angry with you either.”

Relief washed over him.  Maybe he could get used to this whole apologizing thing.  Embarrassing as it was, it seemed to flush the darkness out of them.  For a time, at least.

She released him from the hug, and he asked, “You think you’ve got enough light for the Wayfinder now?”

She held it up, but grimaced as another circuit of purple sparks shot around it.  He frowned, brushing his fingers over the glassy surface.  One of the sparks jumped up and sent a tiny jolt through his hand.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have skipped our practice today,” he said, shoving down a Scrapper of alarm.  What if it was stuck like this?  What if Aqua couldn’t fix it?  How else would they get out of here?

“Well, we’ll start now.” She stood, breathing evenly like he had taught her.  “I have an idea.”

“That makes one of us.” He stood too, relieved at her confidence.  She might not be as steady as she once was, but when she could summon that stubborn assurance that the light could fix anything, the Void help any shadow that stood in her way.

“I’ve been thinking of your example – of how you fought your darkness, or at least developed some of your own light.  You protected me when we sunk into the quicksand.  You chose to look for the good in being stuck here; you even chose to make it better by making dessert for us.  Lately you’ve looked for ways to be generous.”

Vanitas squirmed under her praise, though a proud Archraven Inversed tried to fly out of him.  “It wasn’t much,” he admitted honestly.  “My ‘generosity’ was just a gross pot of chili.”

She grinned.  “At least that made for an interesting memory.  And speaking of memories – I appreciate you trying to cheer me up with happy memories, even if it hasn’t worked  very well.  It’s sweet of you.”

_“Sweet?”_ He spluttered.  “Look, maybe I’m not a heart of pure darkness anymore, but I’m sure as Void not _sweet.”_

The shock on his face drew out her laugh.  “Sure, Van.  The point is, I think I need to do what you did.  Let my actions spite the darkness.  Smile in the face of despair, and show that it has not won.  Even if it thinks it has.”

A small smile tugged at his lips.  “Now _that’s_ a decent motivational speech.  I’ll give it a solid seven.”

“Seven?”  She protested, hands on her hips.  In spite of her displayed offense, he could tell she was holding back a laugh.  “I’ve been working on that idea for a while.  It at least deserves an eight.”

“Seven-point-five,” he amended.  “Now, obviously your speech is easier said than done.  What are you going to do to laugh in the darkness’s face?”

“Well… I actually already started something a few days ago, before the despair became too heavy.  I needed something to distract me while on watch.  I hope you might appreciate it.” She reached down to her leg, brushing aside her skirt and untying something she’d hidden there.

Vanitas stared in disbelief, not daring to smile.  It was too good to be true; she couldn’t mean to actually give him…

“A Wayfinder,” he breathed when she held it out in her palms.  Not her Wayfinder, the polished blue one – no, this one was red, and a much more piecemeal job.  The cord was a thin strip of cloth torn from her skirt; the same fabric that tied together the pieces of the star.  Those pieces were made of shattered bits of a Panacea pot, if their rough edges and uneven shapes were anything to judge by.  The only part that clearly resembled her delicate charm was the silver emblem in the center.  All in all, it looked more like a stitched-together handful of junk than a magical charm.

It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

“It isn’t much of one,” she said with a blush.  “It was the best I could do, under the circumstances.  I would have given it to you earlier, but I wanted to see if I could smooth out the edges, and then it became so difficult to motivate myself to do anything…”

He hugged her suddenly, and her outstretched arm nearly dropped the makeshift Wayfinder.  “Thank you, Aqua.  Thank you.”

Tears pricked his eyes.  Stupid things.  Didn’t they know that crying was for when you’re sad?

“…You’re welcome,” she replied, hugging him back.  When his eyes were dry enough for him to let go, she added, “I tried to cast the same spell on yours that connected mine, Terra’s, and Ven’s.  I’m not sure if it worked or not, though.  I think if it did, only you will be able to activate it.”

He hardly even cared.  Magic or no magic, the charm meant more than she realized.  She had given him the symbol of her friendship with Ventus and Terra. 

_No more being second-best.  Aqua is my friend.  Just as much as she is theirs._

When she held out the charm, he had to restrain himself from snatching it and never letting go.  Instead he took it carefully, not letting his thick fingers crush the fragile pottery.  She then held up her own, her blue a counterpoint to his red.

“I thought this might happen, ever since the darkness infected it,” she admitted softly.  “That was another reason I made this for you.  So that if mine were to become unusable, or if something were to happen to me…”

“Don’t even think about that,” he said, eyes finally jolting away from his new Wayfinder.  “I won’t let that happen.”

“I would like to hope not.  But it’s best to be prepared, regardless.”  She shook herself, then met his eyes with a grimace.  “I hope you’ll forgive me, but that’s another reason I didn’t give this to you sooner.  I was afraid, with things being so tense between us… if you could use it the same way that I did…”

“…That I’d take it and leave you?”  He realized.  “You really thought that?”

She placed a hand over her heart, and her fingers curled into a fist.  “There has been a lot of fear in my heart.  I hope that trusting you will help me fight it.”

“It will.  You can trust me,” he promised, holding his Wayfinder to his own heart.  “I’m not going anywhere.”

The charm began to glow, a soft light that turned the red to more of a pink.  The emotions drained from him into it: determination to stay with Aqua, desire to be free of this place, happiness that she trusted him again.

A bright beam shot from the Wayfinder.  He had to spin suddenly to keep it from piercing through him in its desire to escape the cave.  Funny how the thing always found a path around environmental obstacles, but didn’t care if it punctured a human or Heartless.

“It worked!”  Aqua cheered.  Another, smaller beam of light trailed out of his charm, connecting to the Wayfinder she held.  “Oh?”

“We’re connected too,” he shrugged with a smile.  “Makes sense.”

The Blessed Coach came to him easily, now that he wasn’t jealous anymore.  However, he did feel the drain on his magic more acutely.  Aqua had been right about that.  He was surprised he had enough light in him to handle it at all.  Maybe his connection to her Wayfinder drew some of her power somehow?

Heartless already began to crowd the entrance of their cave; Vanitas and Aqua let the Coach’s vines toss them inside.  She sat down with a smile in his usual spot, and he took hers, the seat that faced the window where the beam of light escaped.

Rubbing his thumb over his new prized possession, he finally felt that everything would be alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Master has given Vanitas a Wayfinder! Vanitas is Master’s frieeeeend!” – in a Dobby voice
> 
> I really want to do some fanart of this fic. I haven’t drawn anything decent in forever, and it’s hard for me to get over my perfectionism to practice drawing again. But I think a few things from this would be really cool to draw: Van’s Wayfinder from this chapter, both of them running over Heartless in the Blessed Coach, some ghostly Prize Pods floating over the fire while they roast marshmallows… there’s more I was thinking of, but I don’t remember them now.
> 
> I had some other ideas for parts of this chapter; unfortunately, there simply wasn’t time to reasonably include everything, and some ideas just didn’t quite fit in with the rest. There were some ideas I really liked that I had to cut anyway. Here was a part that I already wrote, which ended up not fitting. It’s not much of a deleted scene, but I liked the idea, so I decided to leave it here anyway.
> 
>  
> 
> “Huh,” he grunted. “Bored games. Why would you play a game that has ‘boring’ in the name?”
> 
> “No, not ‘bored’ with an e, ‘board’ like-” She thought for a moment, then dug a hand into her suit - literally into her suit; the dark material dissolved around her hand, allowing her to reach into the pocket of her shorts beneath. Since when could she do that? Manipulating her suit should require her to be tapped into her darkness. Yet she did it without flinching. “-like this,” she finished.
> 
> She unfolded some kind of magical cardboard - it looked as small and thin as a playing card, yet it unfolded into a board the size of a pizza box. On its top were several multicolored squares with different symbols on them, arranged in the shape of the silver emblem she used to wear on her chest.
> 
> “You… just happened to be carrying this around?” He asked, raising an eyebrow.
> 
> “It’s called Command Board. It helps create new commands for your deck, and it levels up ones you already have.” She took her command deck from her belt. “Would you like me to teach you how to play?”
> 
> He was tired. It looked stupid. But she finally seemed interested in something, and it was better than listening to her talk about Terra or Ventus.
> 
> “Meh. Why not?”
> 
> Over the next hour, which felt like an eternity, Vanitas realized why not. Aqua stomped him. [Include some stuff about how she won here.]
> 
> ...At least she’s happy now, he thought. That didn’t keep the flat-eyed glare and pout off of his face.
> 
> “Looks like I won,” she said with a smirk, scooping up her new and improved commands. He snatched up his own, struggling to resist the urge to stick out his tongue. Stupid Ventus and his childish impulses influencing him.


	23. Event Horizon

_Vanitas?  Is that you?_

_Venuts?  Sheesh, took you long enough.  I’ve been yelling at you for ages._

_I was asleep again.  I can only stay conscious for a little while.  What do you want?_

_You warned me that something was wrong with Aqua once.  Are you connected to her too?  Can you tell me how to get the darkness out of her heart?_

_I don’t think it works like that… There’s definitely still something wrong. You’re not doing a very good job of this._

_Yeah, says the guy who passed out and left her alone in the first place.  I’m the best you’ve got right now._

_Unfortunately.  Sigh._

_Did you really just say “sigh”?_

_I can only project words, not sounds, okay?  Give me a break._

_Fine, whatever.  So can you help me at all?_

_As far as Aqua goes… not really.  There’s something keeping me out, blocking our connection.  Something more than just her own darkness._

That’s _reassuring._

_What do you want me to do, lie and say she’s fine?  That’s all the help I can give you for now._

_Ugh.  Why did I spend so much time trying to find you?_

_Because you love me, duh.  Don’t worry, I’ve sent help to Aqua before.  You’re getting close.  I might be able to do something again.  See ya later, bro._

_I never told you you could call me ‘bro’!  Hey!  Get back here!  Getting close to what?_

_Yawn.  Sorry bro.  Falling asleep again.  Good luck out there._

XXX

“Van!  Van, wake up!” 

Rude.  He felt like he’d just fallen asleep.  Powering his Wayfinder these past few days had been exhausting.

“If you’re waking me up this early, we better be in the middle of a Heartless attack,” he grumbled, flopping over onto his stomach.

Aqua laughed – so they _weren’t_ in the middle of a Heartless attack.  “Really, Van!  You have to see this!”

“Blegh.”  He rolled again, so he was facing up.  Aqua’s face hovered over him.  “This better be good.”

She didn’t waste time explaining; she grabbed his hand and yanked him to his feet, dragging him out from under the rock overhang.  He yawned and blinked sleep from his eyes.  There had been fog before, hadn’t there?  Aqua had created a small barrier to keep it out while he fell asleep, since he hadn’t been able to keep going any longer.  The Wayfinder had drained him so much he would’ve passed out anywhere, probably even in the middle of the Dark Wind itself.

Regardless, the fog was gone now, like a curtain pulled back to expose the outside world.  A few feet from their camp, the ground fell away, a jagged cliff leading down to a field of arching stones.  That wasn’t what drew his attention, though.

“Void’s _Abyss_ ,” he swore to himself.  “Is that the _sun?”_

“I thought you’d want to see,” Aqua replied smugly.  “There’s something else, too – focus on the horizon.”

He squinted, shielding his eyes from the almost blinding glare of the orb hovering at the edge of the sky.  It was much fainter than any sun on the Realm of Light; probably more equivalent to the light of the moon.  Still, after only having the Realm’s ambient glow, this sun could’ve been a firebrand on his eyeballs.

He forced himself to look below it.  The ground was shifting, shining, reflecting the light from above…

“The ocean,” he breathed.  He imagined he could hear it even from here, what still had to be a half-day’s journey away.  “Is that… do you think it’s…?”

“The edge.”  She nodded.

“The edge of the Realm of Darkness…”  It seemed too good to be true.  Sure, they had been searching for what felt like a lifetime, but had he ever really expected to find it?

Yes.  He had.  He just hadn’t been able to anticipate this feeling – the hope that welled in him, the joy, the excitement.  The sense of _finality,_ of accomplishing the purpose of his existence.  Like when he had forged the X-Blade, magnified tenfold.

The emotions wanted to form an Inversed; he instead fed them into his Wayfinder, which had remained clutched in his hand while he’d slept.  Ever since Aqua had told him that her spell strengthened the porcelain so it wouldn’t break, he had hardly let it go.  She seemed to think that was funny, but he didn’t care.

The ray of light exploded outward, straight towards the ocean.

“You’re awake enough now, then?”  Aqua asked with a laugh.

“Awake enough to let you eat my dust.” 

He grinned, took off at a sprint, and leapt over the side of the cliff.  As the wind whooshed past him, he barely heard Aqua call him something along the lines of an arrogant cheater.  Then she was falling beside him; they hung in the air, and for that moment he met her eyes.  The blue shone brightly, and it felt _real,_ not a mask skimming over gold.

Then his boots hit the ground.  The shock waves coursed up through his knees, but he was already running, weaving through twisted arches of stone, leaping over blue-streaked boulders.  His former fatigue left behind, he practically flew over the landscape, like he was one with the ray of light he held.

Aqua didn’t trail far behind - though her speed was no match for his, she did have longer legs and magic-boosted jumps.  Few Heartless interrupted their race; this close to the Realm of Light, it took more energy for them to appear.  Still, the few Neoshadows that did pop up slowed him down, and she gained on him by Doubleflighting over a low-hanging arch.

Two could play at that game.  As he crested another boulder, he leapt and shot a burst of Aeroga beneath his feet.  The wind propelled him forward, past a bewildered Aqua, to the top of another contorted rock formation.  He cast the spell again, timing it well enough to keep his forward momentum.

No “practically” about it now - he flew. The wind in his face, his spikes of hair flung back, his skirt fluttering like the makeshift end of a cape. 

It was the feeling of freedom.

Of course, it couldn’t last forever.  He could only shove the exhaustion aside for so long.  So, against the protests of his pride, he paused the race.  Aqua nearly crashed into him as he stopped; she had quickly picked up on his Aeroga trick to regain lost ground.  She slowed her descent with the spell as his Wayfinder’s light faded, letting the emotions rush back into him.

“Giving up already?”  She taunted.

“That won’t work on me this time,” he replied with a smile, casting Cure over himself.  Would Esuna have been better for fatigue?  He still got their exact effects confused sometimes, even though he had drastically improved in both elements.  “I know I could beat you.  I just want to save some of my energy for when we get there.”

She just smirked.  Odd how natural that expression was coming too look on her face.  “Of course you did.”

He couldn’t see the ocean from this angle anymore, but he felt it in the distance, pulling on him.  The faraway sun cast long shadows from the boulders, which they fought with their streaks of blue luminescence.  He reclined in one such shadow, catching his breath.

That wind, the power of it… maybe he was just imagining things because of his dream, but flying like he had, he felt a little closer to his other half.  Or maybe he _was_ actually getting closer to Ventus.  Aqua said she’d left him in the Land of Departure; that was a word in the Realm Between, which separated the Light from Darkness.  He just lumped it in with the Realm of Light, though.  Anything outside of this endless waste was good enough for him.

“Are you ready?”  Aqua asked, shifting her weight from her heels to her toes.

“Someone’s patient today,” he mumbled sarcastically.  Arms crossed, he closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath.  The air smelled cleaner here, even to his dampened nose.

“Don’t you feel the same way?  Ready to be rid of this awful place?”

He was.  And yet, was he?  Aqua had seemed to improve a little the past few days, likely because she no longer felt the strain of powering her Wayfinder.  That light instead went to fighting her darkness.  It certainly wasn’t a perfect or permanent solution; she had still erupted at him a few times, but he had grown a thicker skin.  He tried to understand, rather than reacting to whichever emotions reared their heads.  Combined with idle conversation about anything from favorite ice cream flavors to which Heartless were most annoying, it had made the past few days more pleasant than any in a long time.

What would happen when all of that was over?  Would this become nothing more than a happy dream?

He twirled his Wayfinder in the air on one finger.  That was what he held on to, when those fears took him.  Even if things changed, Aqua wouldn’t abandon him.  She wasn’t like Xehanort, ready to throw away a tool once it outlived its use.  That concept, though planted firmly enough in his mind, was harder to keep in his heart.

“…Van?”  She asked again, when he stayed silent.

“Yeah.”  He caught the Wayfinder back in his hand.  “Let’s go.”

Whatever came after this, he was ready to find out.

XXX

Vanitas could see it now – the dark ocean, splitting the land from the sky, expanding to fill the horizon.  Firm stone gave way to soft sand beneath his boots.  The dim sunlight washed over it all, and in a strange perversion of nature, bathed them in coldness.

They were here.  They were finally, _finally_ here.

Aqua approached the lapping waves reverently, as if it were a deity that might ascend at any moment, leaving them alone again.  She fell to her knees in the surf.  “We made it… we… we actually made it…”

He sat beside her, legs stretched out in the water.  His suit kept him dry, but it still felt colder than he expected.  “We did, didn’t we?”

Tears streamed down her face.  He hoped those were the weird good-tears, like he’d cried on receiving his Wayfinder.  He couldn’t imagine why she would be sad.  “It’s beautiful.”

“Yeah,” he agreed.  It was no forest, but the slight push and pull of the waves was comfortable enough.  So long as she didn’t expect him to go any farther out in it.

For a few moments, they just sat there, staring towards the horizon.  Neither wanted to be the first to bring up the question that just now dawned on them:  what in the Void’s empty name were they supposed to do now?

“Are you still tired?”  Aqua finally asked.  “Because we could rest for a little while, if that would help.  Before…”

“Yeah.”  He nodded.  Before whatever they were going to do.

She folded her legs out from under her, sticking them out in the waves.  “It feels like years since I’ve been to the beach.  There was one in the Land of Departure, if you went out past the forest a ways.”

“I know.”  He’d watched her and her friends play there a few times.  From a safe distance, of course.  That had been one of their stranger activities, he thought.  Why would they wear even less clothing than usual to go swimming?  Did most people like the feeling of water on their bare skin?  Maybe not all clothes worked as well in water as his suit; he wouldn’t know.

“You… did Master Xehanort take you there when you came to visit?”  She asked.

“Yeah,” he lied quickly, but his red face betrayed him.  Stupid mask, never being there when he needed it.  Though he guessed it would be just as obvious if he summoned his mask every time he got embarrassed.  “…Well, I took the liberty of exploring by myself.”

It was a good enough lie; she seemed to accept it at least.  That might’ve been because she was staring at the water rather than his flushing face. 

“It was my favorite place, you know.  My home world didn’t have a beach, or much water at all really, so Terra taught me how to swim there.”  She smiled.  After all of his attempts to drag a happy memory out of her, she had finally done it of her own accord, all because of a big pit of water.  And because of _Terra,_ of course.  He tried not to scowl.

“And you thought that was fun?”  He asked, managing to keep his face flat.

“Of course.  I love swimming.”  She stood, splashing him a little in the process.  “And since we’re here…”

“You’re kidding.”  He scrambled to his feet as she waded in deeper.  “Aqua, this isn’t your beach!  We’re still in the Realm of Darkness, there could be – there could be _Heartless_ in there!”

She paused thoughtfully, but then she said, “I don’t think so.  We’re close to the Realm of Light here, and we haven’t seen any Heartless in a while.  I don’t think they can make it out here.”

“I’d rather not find out.”  He crossed his arms.  All that water looked like a perfect hiding place for a Heartless.  Or anything else.

“We’ll be careful.  Besides, we’ll have to come this way eventually.”  She brushed the surface of his fear: that this ocean might be the way out.  Its murky depths could somehow hold the key to the Light.

“Well we’re not going to do it by _swimming,”_ he pointed out, taking a cautious step forward.  The water swishing around his ankles suddenly felt more menacing than it had looked from the shore.

“Of course not, but that doesn’t have to stop us from having fun now, does it?”  She smiled.

“If you count being soggy and salty as ‘fun,’” he muttered, inching towards her.  The waves tugged unnaturally at his feet.  Not that this water was much different than that of the Realm of Light; it was just that _any_ liquid pulling on him felt unnatural.

“You… don’t like swimming?”  She barely seemed able to comprehend the thought.

Was it possible to dislike something he’d never done?  He figured so.  She was waist-deep now; he had to splash through up to his knees to get close enough to talk without yelling.  His boots weren’t quite watertight, and he shivered when the liquid rushed in and chilled his toes.

“It sounds stupid,” he replied firmly, if not tactfully.

She blinked, and then realization dawned on her face.  “You’ve never been swimming before, have you?”

“…No,” he admitted.  She nodded.

“That’s right.  Ven didn’t know how to swim either, though I thought that was likely due to his memory loss…”

“It wasn’t,” he said without thinking.  Then, at the question in her eyes and against his better judgement, he elaborated.  “My… our… mom… she was going to take us to the beach.  In the summer.  But then Xehanort came, and…”

“…Oh.” Thankfully, she didn’t force him to finish.  “I’m… I know nothing I can say will truly fix… well, anything, but… I’m sorry.  I’m sorry that you lost so much.”

He shrugged it off.  What did it matter?  It was so long ago.  His mom probably didn’t even miss him anymore.  At one point, when he had recently split from Ventus, he had thought of going to see her.  But he’d quickly come to realize that Ventus’s mom wouldn’t want to see a monster claiming to be her son.

“I never knew… I never you remembered, either,” she added, eyes downcast.  “But it makes sense.  Ven didn’t remember anything.  Do you, then…?”

“Yeah,” he admitted bitterly.  “I remember everything.  For all the good it’s done me.”

She finally retreated from the deeper part of the ocean, splashing over to place her hand on his shoulder.  “I may not be able to do much, but I can at least do something, if it would help.  Would you like me to teach you how to swim?”

He looked out at the ocean, dark and foreboding.  The light gleaming over it just seemed like a trap to entice him out there, just for the water to attack him.  There was a reason he’d named his first Unversed Floods, and it wasn’t just for their blue color.  Vast amounts of water were some of the most intimidating things he could imagine.

He wanted to reject her offer.  But if she could do it, and if _Terra_ could do it, then there was no way he was going to wimp out.

“That… could be fun.”  He put on a grimace that might pass as a smile, if she squinted hard enough.

“I’m sure you’ll like it once you get the hang of it,” she promised, taking his hand and leading him out into the deeper water.  He tried to ignore the feeling that he was sinking through that horrible quicksand again as she pulled him all the way out to his shoulders.  Thankfully, the tide felt weaker here farther from shore, and there were no large waves like on other beaches he’d seen.

“…Sure,” he sighed.

Like she had when teaching him magic, Aqua quickly went into Master Mode.  Or more accurately, Lecture Mode.  “Let’s start by having you practice floating.  You’ll want to lie on your back, like this…” She suddenly went horizontal, bobbing on top of the water.  “Breathe in deeply; it will help you be more buoyant.”

Vanitas just stared at her.  Was this some kind of freaky water magic?  He didn’t think she’d cast a spell, but people didn’t just _float._ They were heavier than the water, obviously.  Though boats could float, and they were filled with heavy things… Maybe boats were powered by water magic too.

Sighing, he just decided to go with the crazy trust-fall exercise.  He summoned his mask first, though.  It wasn’t fully watertight, but it would keep him from drowning if he happened to fall down too deep.

As he started to lean back and water leaked in through the back of his helmet, he panicked.  He couldn’t help it that water was so freakishly unnatural.  His legs spasmed, seemingly of their own accord, and he plunged below the surface.

_No no no NO NO NO_

So dark, so cold, running down the back of his neck, dripping into his face –

And then Aqua’s arms were pulling him up, to safety.  He dissolved his mask so he could gasp for breath, though realistically he knew he’d had plenty of air.  The water would’ve taken minutes to flood in, not seconds. 

She watched him with concern.  “Are you alright?”

_Get ahold of yourself, idiot!_ “I’m f-fine,” he spluttered.

“Do you want to try again?  I won’t force you.”

And let some stupid water get the best of him?  No way.  “I’m _fine._ Show me again.”

She did; it still looked like magic.  When it was his turn to try again, she held her arms under him first, supporting him until he could float on his own.  Maybe he was just more dense than her, but it took him several tries before he could do it.  Even then, he had to hold in a deep breath to keep from feeling like he would sink.

“Now you’re getting it!  Now, let’s try something that should be fairly simple…”

Of course, she had to phrase it like that, so that when he failed he’d feel like an even bigger idiot.  She floated on her back again, but this time the slowly waved her arms and legs, so she moved backwards through the water.

“Doesn’t look too bad,” he said with a nod.  He could do this.  Inhaling deeply – his nose felt clogged with salt – he leaned back.  However, when he flailed his limbs back and forth, he just splashed uselessly.  He quickly righted himself, planting his soggy boots in the sand.

“There’s a rhythm to it,” Aqua explained, still floating.  “Watch again.  See how I only push on the water; I leave my arms out as I raise them over my head, see?”

He didn’t quite see.  But he huffed and tried again anyway.

He didn’t count how many failed attempts he made.  The number would have been horribly embarrassing.  So he chose to focus on the fact that he did, eventually, figure it out.  Not that he found it as wonderful as Aqua seemed to.  She was graceful as an angelfish in the water.  He was more of an awkward upside-down turtle.

While he practiced his swimming, she dove in and out of the water around him, doing flips beneath the surface and accidentally spraying him a few times.  Though he couldn’t figure out why she would voluntarily put herself under the water’s power, he could appreciate the beauty of her performance.

He righted himself, looking for where she would surface next.  When she did, he had his arms ready to shove forward a tidal splash.

“Hey!”  She laughed.  Then came what he should have expected: retaliation.  He tried to dodge to the side as she swept another wave towards him.  It swept over his face, stinging his nose, flattening his remaining spikes of hair.  How had he let her talk him in to practicing without his mask?

He spat out the brine and counterattacked with a vengeance.  His wave wasn’t nearly as impressive, though; it barely caught the side of her head.  Maybe she _was_ using water magic.

Their splashing quickly escalated into all-out war, with water flying on both sides.  Now she was _definitely_ using magic; a tsunami crashed completely over his head. 

“Hey, that’s cheating!”  At least he’d summoned his mask by then.  Ignoring the fact that by using magic he would be “cheating” too, he countered with an Aero-boosted wave of his own.  She laughed as the water sprayed her, mostly turned to mist by his magic.

“See, I told you this would be fun!”  She called.

“Oh, I’ll show _you_ fun,” he muttered.  _Was_ this fun?  She had tried to explain fun to him, once.  Food was fun, he’d learned since then.  He thought that their earlier race might have even been fun.  But this?  Getting soaking wet and feeling salt sting his eyes?

…Okay, maybe it was a little.  At least, it was until one of her waves completely knocked him over, sending him backwards, head-over-heels, into the water.  His helmet hit the sandy ground; he lost his sense of direction.  Up was only slightly lighter than down.  Everywhere the brine leaked in through his mask’s cracks; some found its way into his mouth.  He coughed, rolling in the sand, arms and legs flailing like he could beat the water into letting him go.

Aqua grabbed him, of course.  She always was there both to witness his weakness and save him from it.  When he didn’t move upon resurfacing, she carried him like a useless princess back to shore.  A soggy, wet, pathetic princess.

“Put me down,” he gurgled, but either he wasn’t loud enough, or she didn’t care about his pride.  She didn’t set him down until they were back on solid, sandy ground.

He flung off his helmet, gasping again.  Why was the water so terrifying?  Why could it send him into a state of panic so instinctual that his sane mind felt like it could only watch in horror?  He could keep his head fighting Heartless, heck, even fighting the Dark Wind.  He was just lucky it didn’t have a counterpart called the Dark Ocean.

“I’m sorry, Van, I got carried away…”  She leaned over him, face concerned.

“Not your fault.  I started it.  Shouldn’t dish out what I can’t take.”  He shrugged, which felt odd while lying on the sand.

She wasn’t sure if she should laugh at that.  “Regardless… we don’t have to swim anymore.  Maybe we should figure out how to get out of here.”

“Right,” he replied, glad for a change of subject.  Sitting up, he clasped his hand over his Wayfinder.  For a moment he’d been afraid it had been lost in the water and commotion; touching it relaxed him.  He pushed out the thoughts of water, focused on positive emotions, and funneled them towards it.

The beam of light shot towards the water – and then arced straight into it.

“Of course.”  He bit back a curse.  “Go _under_ the water.  Why not!  Might as well go bury myself while I’m at it!”

“You don’t… happen to have any submarine Inversed, do you?”  Aqua asked weakly.  He shook his head.

“Fresh out.”  And he doubted he could summon enough positivity towards the suffocating water to come up with a new one.

“It must be in layers,” she mused.  “The Realms.  Maybe they don’t blend into each other seamlessly, but stack on top of each other… Perhaps this is a weak point in the fabric of the universe.  A place where, if we dove deep enough, we would surface in the Realm of Light.”

“That’s a great theory and all, but I’m not about to test it.”  Even if it weren’t underwater, the light arced all the way out in the middle of the ocean.  Way too far to swim.  He wrapped his arms around himself, as if he could squeeze the water out of his suit that way.  Rather than drying him, the surreal sunlight only served to make him colder.

“Then… it appears we’re at an impasse.”  Her voice cracked.

Was that it?  After all their fighting, destroying thousands of Heartless, crossing thousands of miles, were they really going to be imprisoned by a glorified puddle?  He thought about braving it, swimming with all his might, letting himself sink below the waves…

The panic nearly overtook him again just thinking about it.  He couldn’t.  Maybe he was weak for it, but he _couldn’t._ Maybe if Aqua took the time to teach him here for weeks, months maybe… _Maybe_ by then he could do it.  If she was right and there weren’t Heartless out there in the deep.

He pulled his knees to his chest.  “Yeah.  I guess we are.”

Aqua stared at the Wayfinder, still glowing at his side.  As if the beam would change its mind if he only powered it long enough.  “What… what happens now?”

“…I don’t know.”  Admitting it was like opening a gate to the darkness in his heart.  The darkness that Aqua’s light, and then his own, had pushed down for so long. Despair.  Deep, suffocating despair.

He saw it reflected in her eyes.  Reflected along with his gold.  The spell flickered, as if to remind them both that regardless of what they pretended, the darkness would always be there waiting.  So long as they were trapped here.

“Is it time, Van?”  She asked in a whisper.

“Time… for what?”

She closed her eyes.  “Time to give in to the darkness.  You said it when we first met – no being of light survives here.  I thought we could be the exceptions… but if this is as far as we can go… I just don’t know, without a goal to strive for – I don’t know how long I’ll be able to hold on.”

Just give in.  For a moment, the thought sounded pretty nice.  Emptiness.  Peace.

But he knew darkness.  He’d been its hands; he’d told its lies.  Darkness was _not_ peace.  It never had been, and never would be.

“No,” he breathed.  “No, Aqua.  So long as we’re together, we have a reason to hold on.”

He could hardly believe something so sappy had fallen so easily out of his mouth.  She just took it in stride.

“That could be enough.  If by holding on, I’m protecting you…”  A smile found its way to her face.  “I may have failed Terra and Ven, but I don’t have to fail you too.”

“You won’t.”  He said it, he even believed it.  How he could believe something he knew was false, he wasn’t sure.  She _would_ fail him.  The darkness would take her, eventually.

When it did, they would go together.  That thought, at least, made it easier to bear.

He stared back towards the ocean, where his guiding light betrayed him.  The beam of light… hadn’t it been farther out before?

“Aqua, do you see that?”  He shook her arm.

“See…”  She gasped.

The ray was getting shorter.  He saw it move, leisurely, as if it were just skimming the water’s surface.  They sat there, watching it, until it was close enough to swim to.  Then Aqua stood.

“Wait!  Aqua, you don’t know what it is!”  He grabbed her arm again when she still looked ready to chase after the light.  “There could be some Heartless eating it, or…!”

He could see it now, just barely.  Something bobbing on top of the waves, then rolling under them, tossed about yet still moving in a smooth line towards them.  When it rose to the surface, his Wayfinder’s light illuminated the green object.

Aqua saw it too.  At that point, he couldn’t stop her from running to it.  He followed behind, crashing through the water with much less grace.

His Wayfinder stopped glowing when she scooped the item from the water.  Tears filled her eyes.  “Ven… oh, Ven…”

It was Ventus’s Wayfinder.  Aqua held up her blue charm next to the green, as if to confirm that they were the same.  Vanitas found himself holding his up as well.  Next to the two original Wayfinders, composed of stained glass and metal rather than cracked pottery, his looked like a crude forgery of a real work of art.  That didn’t make it any less real to him, though.

“Oh, Ven, what happened to you…?”  Aqua cried, her tears mixing with the salt water.  “Van… would you have felt it if something bad happened to him?”

 “I don’t know.”  He frowned.  Ventus had just talked to him today, in his dream.  He sure hadn’t sounded like he was in trouble.  Wait – his _dream_.  He wanted to smack his forehead for his stupidity.  “Actually, I think Ventus is just fine.  Let me see that.”

She reluctantly passed the Wayfinder over by its cord, though her eyes were full of curiosity.

“He said he might be able to send help,” Vanitas told her.  “I guess I was just expecting something a little more, y’know, _helpful_.”

“He talked to you again?”

He nodded.  Now, if only he knew _what_ exactly this stupid charm was supposed to do…  His Wayfinder was attracted to it, the same way it was to Aqua’s.  Had the ray supposedly leading out of the Realm of Darkness just been stringing them along to this stupid piece of glass the whole time?

The water washed against his shins as he closed his eyes, trying to sense any kind of magic from the charm.  There was something there alright, something his nose could pick up over the smell of brine.  A burning, bleach-like scent of light.

“Ugh.  You can still make me sick from a realm away,” he muttered, hopefully too quietly for Aqua to hear.  Then a little louder, “You have any idea why he’d give us this?”

She shook her head.  “Once, his and Terra’s keyblades came to my rescue, when I had to fight off a horde of Darksides.  But I don’t think this is meant for that purpose.”

He imagined them throwing the charm at a flood of Heartless, using it like a light grenade.  The thought almost made him laugh.  Instead, he just shook the green Wayfinder by its cord.  “Couldn’t he have thought to send an instruction manual?”

Aqua did laugh at that.  “Maybe… it’s just his way of sending us hope.  Letting us know that he’s okay.”

“Sounds kind of stupid, if you ask me.  _I_ could’ve told you he’s fine.”

“Well, I still appreciate it.  May I have it back?”  She asked, holding out her hand.  He shrugged and placed the useless piece of junk in her palm.  For a moment, their hands overlapped, the Wayfinder sandwiched between.  First, all he felt was sudden warmth. 

Then he saw the glow.  Aqua gasped, nearly dropping the charm, but he held her hand tighter.  Something magical was happening, something they shouldn’t interrupt.

A few feet away, where the water grew deeper, a line of light sliced through the air.  It was as if someone had cut through the fabric of the Realms with a keyblade.  It wasn’t like the cold orb hanging in the sky – this light bathed him in warmth, a warmth that grew as the rift twisted, expanding into a blinding portal.

“He did it,” Vanitas breathed.  “Even while he’s passed out, that idiot knows how to throw his light around.”  His grin betrayed the truth behind his insult.  Jealous as he might be of his other half, he would’ve hugged him right then if he could.

“A door to the light,” Aqua said in awe, staring at it so long she should’ve gone blind.  To be fair, he should have too.  He shook his head, trying to clear the spots from his eyes.

“What are we standing here for?  Get your butt through that door!”  He dragged her towards it, the charm still clutched between their linked hands.

He heard her gasp.  It was his only warning.  Then suddenly her legs gave out, the whole of her weight dragging him towards the waist-deep water.  He barely managed to lean into her, catching her weight on his shoulder before they could both fall.  Her head limply leaned against his, and when their cheeks touched, hers was cold as ice.  A shiver wracked her body.

“No, Aqua, not now!”  He couldn’t carry her through the deeper water, not all the way to the door.  If he slipped and fell…

With a glance over his shoulder, he made a decision.  He turned and ran back towards shore, Aqua’s shudders threatening to knock him off balance.  Not just shudders – _seizures_ sent her limbs flailing erratically.  The sickness had never been this bad before.  It had been so long since she had an episode; why now?  Why when they were _so close?_

He dropped her on the sand, less gently than he meant to.  He winced and knelt beside her.  “Esuna!”

The diamonds of light fell around her.  The seizure stopped immediately.  Had it finally worked?  Had he _finally_ mastered a healing spell?

She sat up so fast, he blinked and nearly missed it.  Just as quickly her arm shot out.

“Aqu—!”

Her hand squeezed around his neck, choking off his cry.  And then her eyes flashed open, afire with a darkness he’d never seen in her before.  Her color spell had slid away; the gold that had lurked there now prowled openly.

_No, Aqua!  AQUA!_

He clawed at her hand, eyes wide and frantic, but her lips just twisted into a cruel smile.

“ _Hello, Vanitassss.  We told you you would ssssee ussss.”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s a new poll on my profile, please go vote on it!  I’m curious about what everyone wants to happen between Aqua and Vanitas.  This is more for my own curiosity than anything; I already have the ending planned out.
> 
> And we’re getting close to that.  I bet you all knew it couldn’t be that easy, right?
> 
> For anyone who’s read Mistborn (@Sami, I’m looking at you :P), Vanitas’s trick with using Aeroga to shoot himself around was vaguely inspired by that.
> 
>  


	24. Gathering Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the longer wait on this one! I moved out to my college apartment this week and it was kind of crazy, had some technical difficulties too. On top of this just being one of the harder chapters to write. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Oh, and I forgot to mention earlier – Jdkwinxgrl from AO3 provided some awesome concept art of some of the Inversed! Here are the links, but I will also put in the pictures below (used with permission). Thanks again Jdkwinxgrl! Also, now that I figured out how to put in pictures, I'll be putting up the cover art I drew forever ago on the first chapter, feel free to check it out!  
> Prize Pod: https://prntscr.com/gaz14d  
> Mandrake: https://prntscr.com/gaz129  
> Bruiser/Protector: https://prntscr.com/gaz0ym

This gold-eyed monster _wasn’t_ Aqua.  That twisted grin, the sick glee in her eyes as she choked the life out of him - it wasn’t her.  It wore her face, but it wasn’t.  The smell was all wrong.  Rather than clean cotton, sludge and mold suffocated him as surely as her grip.

It was this fact that gave him the strength to break through his panic and cast Aeroga.

Aqua nearly took his throat with her as she was flung back, crashing against a boulder.  The yell of pain that escaped her mouth sounded so much like _her._ He cringed, resisting the urge to run to her side.  

His mind was still reeling.  That voice was the Dark Wind for sure.  How had he let it deceive him?  He should have known.  He _had_ known, known its plan had to be more than occasionally tormenting them.  He had let himself grow careless, and now Aqua would pay the price for it.

Dark smoke leaked from her limp form.  Ignoring his better judgement, he ran to her.  The smoke swirled around her, growing until it became a raging storm.  He summoned his mask and gritted his teeth against it, pressing onward.

_“Aqua!”_ He yelled.  “Please!  Tell me you’re in there!”

The monster wearing Aqua’s body stood.  Suddenly he wondered if this was how she had felt, watching him possess Ventus.  If she’d felt half of the horror and fury he did now, then she’d had every reason to hate him.  “ _Oh, she issss. Though not for long.  Your friend hasssss sssserved her purpossssse.”_

“Oh yeah?”  He yelled, hoping he could keep it talking, give him time to come up with a plan.  “And what’s that?”

It chuckled.  It wasn’t Aqua’s laugh, just like the voice wasn’t her voice.  He couldn’t place it as male or female.  Smooth and serpentine as before, it stuck daggers in his heart.  “ _To be our vesssssel to the Light, of coursssse.”_

“ _Your_ vessel-!  You let her go! She’s _mine_ , you freak!”

_Freak._ Aqua had called him that once.  All of this was so wrong.  Why had it picked her?  Why hadn’t it possessed him?  He was already dark.  And when it came down to it, Aqua could have beaten him again.  Destroyed him if she had to.  He knew she could.  She had always been stronger…

“Yours?”  Aqua asked, and the hiss left her voice.  “Oh, Vanitas.  Sweet, gullible Vanitas.  When have I ever been yours?”

He stepped back.  No… that… that monster still had her.  Maybe it could steal her voice, but Aqua… she would never say that.

Right?

His hesitation gave her opening to attack.  Master Keeper filled her hand in a cloud of darkness, and a second later it was rushing towards his chest.  He cartwheeled out of the way on one hand, Void Gear flashing to the other.  His mask enveloped his face, hiding the hurt there.

She didn’t stop, didn’t slow.  Instead of utilizing her usual array of magic, she barraged him with darkness-fueled strikes.  His speed barely kept him alive, and even so, slices quickly lined his suit.  He’d need an opening to use Curaga soon.

Her furious attacks, punctuated with screams, left his mind no time to come up with a plan.  It left his body no room to move to the offensive, either - if his writhing heart would let him.  It was all he could do to parry, to hold on, to not let Unversed of sheer agony burst from him -

Actually, that gave him an idea.

He leapt almost out of range of her blade; it still nicked through his suit, cutting another red scar across the black.  He funneled that pain into a group of Unversed.  Floods exploded from him, taking his pain upon themselves for the moment.  They charged Aqua, responding to his mental command to immobilize her.  

A wicked grin split her face.  As the Floods leapt for her, they burst back into darkness.  Pain engulfed him, but the Unversed themselves didn’t return.  What the--?

Aqua breathed in the dark blue mist his Floods had become.   _“Yessss, feed usss your darknessss.  Give in to it.  Become one of usssss.”_

“Yeah, how about I _don’t_ do that?”  Vanitas skipped back, wracking his brain for more ideas.  His usual fallback was gone; Unversed would be useless in this fight.  If the Dark Wind was anything like the giant keyblade-eating Heartless, _any_ kind of dark attack would be useless.  Judging by the sudden burst of darkness she shot towards him, it would probably only fuel her power.

All her bouts of sickness… all his effort to help her control the darkness… had this faceless monster been hiding in her heart this whole time?  If he couldn’t extract it before, how would he now, in the heat of battle?

He dove underground, hoping to get some distance, prepare himself again.  But when he resurfaced, he saw Aqua bolting towards the water.

Towards the door to the light.

He cursed and cast Thundaga.  Bolts rained from his keyblade, shooting towards her.  He missed by a hair, but the current still paralyzed her through the water.

Of course, that meant that he couldn’t stand in the water for a moment, either.  He jumped and shot Aeroga towards the ground at an angle, blasting himself towards her - directly on top of her, actually.  They rolled through the surf; he held his breath in spite of his mask.

_Don’t panic.  Don’t panic.  DON’T PANIC._

He fought Aqua’s writhing limbs and came out on top, pinning her under the shallow water.  Bubbles trailed from her mouth as he gasped for breath.  She didn’t seem to be struggling - had he knocked her unconscious?  He wanted to cast Curaga on her, make sure she was alright, but he didn’t dare.  If that monster made it to the Realm of Light, wearing her skin…  He pictured the Dark Wind tearing across the worlds, blocking out the sun, hissing and laughing as it suffocated every bit of light.

No more bubbles escaped her mouth.  His grip loosened, but in that moment, her golden eyes shot open.  She twisted, and before he could scream, he was the one pinned, the one trapped beneath the horrible waves.  His keyblade vanished as it was knocked from his fingers.  A few Mandrakes of panic burst from him; she absorbed them as easily as the night absorbed shadows.

“You’re so quick to call everyone else pathetic,” She mused, staring through his helmet.  He was sure that even through the thick glass, she could see his terror.  “I wonder if you can see your reflection in that mask of yours.  Maybe then you’d realize how pathetic _you_ really are.”

He writhed beneath her, straining his neck to keep his head above the waves.  He couldn’t see his own reflection, but he knew she was right.  He _was_ pathetic.

But the real Aqua never would have said so.  That gave him the strength to fight, to make this demon release her.  But _how?_

His struggling was useless, both against her weight and against the water.  She held Master Keeper high above her head, ready to plunge it towards his heart.  He tried to dive underground, but the water and her grip interfered; he couldn’t escape.

To die at the blade of his only friend, steps away from safety.  Pathetic.

_No - I can’t die - I can’t leave her like this--_

Her blade wasn’t going to give him a choice.  It streaked towards his chest--

And stopped.

Pain contorted Aqua’s face; the angle of her stab shifted, lodging the keyblade in the sand right next to his rib cage.

“Van!” She yelled, her eyes flashing back to blue for a moment.  “Please!  You have to stop me!  I’m trying-”

He didn’t get to hear what she was trying.  The gold flooded her eyes again, and she pulled the keyblade from the sand with a splash.  It gave him a second to slip out from under her - something that, for once, the horrible water helped him with.

The door to the light still shone over the waves. She was already standing, but he was faster. If he could cross most of the distance in the air, he could get there first--

And then what?  Leave her here, like this?  He’d rather tear out his own heart first. The pain would be about the same.

He had to get her away from the door, away from the water, where they could have a fair fight.  If he could win even then.   _No, don't think like that.  I don’t have to beat her, I just have to get the Dark Wind out of her._

He cast Magnera, not a spell he was very good at, especially without a command in his deck.  Still, it was enough to tug Aqua towards him - along with a wall of water.  Skidding out of its way, he summoned Void Gear, just in time to block Aqua’s downward strike.

“I know you’re in there!”  He yelled to her.  “Tell that idiot to get out of your heart! Prove to it that your light’s stronger!”

She chuckled, a deep sound that shouldn’t have been able to come from her throat.  “ _She isss but one light.  We are many darknessssss.”_

“ _Shut up!_ ”  He spat, taking the offensive with a spinning strike.  Keep it distracted; give the real Aqua time to fight it from inside.  She _was_ stronger.  She was the strongest person he’d ever known.

He wished the Dark Wind couldn't use her strength against him.  It released a barrage of dark orbs that homed in on him; he cartwheeled away, but one still caught him on the arm, sending him rolling across the sand.

“ _You fight well, but it is uselesssss,”_ it said, casually approaching him.  “ _You are darknessss too, yessss? Join usssss.”_

He dissolved his mask.  He wanted this monster to see the flaming glare he’d summoned just for it.  “ _Never.”_

Aqua’s face fell, as if he had hurt her.  “You... don’t want to join me, Van?  Don’t you want us to be together…?”

It was toying with his mind, he knew it.  Still, he couldn’t help remembering when he had thought of merging with her instead of Ventus.  Was this what would have happened?  Would he have turned her into a monster?

He would have.  And he wouldn’t have thought twice.

“I want the real Aqua,” he growled, fighting back tears.  “I want my friend back!”

“Don’t you see, Vanitas?”  She snapped.  Darkness swirled around her keyblade, wafted from her shoulders.  “This is who I am!  This is _who you made me to be!_ ”

_“Liar!”_ Vanitas roared, storming to his feet--

Only for her keyblade to impale his shoulder.

He screamed so loud that she actually flinched.  Her blade came out of his flesh with just as much agony as it entered.  Void Gear fell from his hand, joining the splatter of blood in the sand.

He collapsed in it.  Shock overwhelmed him; his limbs turned to ice.  All except for that one fiery blossom of pain.

_“It sssseemsss I made the correct choicsssse.”_ Aqua smirked.  If he got them out of this, he swore he’d never let her smirk again.  “ _You really are pathetic, Vanitassss.”_

She slammed the toe of her boot into his side, making him cry out in anguish, before turning back to the ocean.  Gritting his teeth against the pain, he took advantage of the opportunity to cast a quick Curaga.  His skin and suit reknit most of the way; the fire faded to a dull ache.

Then he scrambled up just enough to tackle the backs of her knees.  That would teach the Dark Wind to underestimate him.

“You know what’s pathetic? _You.”_ He wrestled the monster to the ground.  “You can’t even get out of here without Aqua’s body, can you?  You’re darkness.  You’re stuck here.”

It didn’t reply, instead growling ferally and trying to use Aqua’s blade to gain leverage against the sand. Suddenly black smoke gusted from her arms, surrounding him in a whirlwind of foul smells.  He caused his arrogance in dismissing his mask; the smoke invaded his lungs like a hungry parasite.  His scream wasn’t enough to expel it; it found its way into his blood, his heart--

_Your feelingssss are ssstill ssso sssstrong…_ He heard the voice in his head this time; he clutched at it, only succeeding in a ripping out chunks of his hair.  Dizziness swept over him, and he collapsed on top of Aqua.   _There isss darknessss here, but there isss light… more light than before… where have you found light in thisss realm?_

Light.  He… he had to find it…

Though his throat was too raw to scream, his heart wasn’t.  The Dark Wind tore at it, examining each and every piece, ripping up memories like they were weeds. They flashed through his mind - Aqua’s smile, the light in her blue eyes, her voice the first time she had called him Van...

_It issss the girl,_ it realized. _Ssssomehow, she hassss created more light in you… more for ussss to destroy…_

“No,” he gasped through the smoke.  “My light… belongs… to _me.”_

The voice laughed in his mind.  _Not for long._

What could he do?  He couldn’t see; he could hardly breathe; the Wind was sapping his already small reserve of strength.  He couldn’t even cast Curaga.  Aqua’s unconscious form below him was his only small comfort.

_I did say… that we would go down together…_

His hand brushed something cold. Metal and glass - a Wayfinder.  Either hers or Ventus’s; he couldn’t see the color.  Frantic, his other hand searched for the rough-edged porcelain of his own.

There.  He clasped his fingers around it, trying not to breathe.  The Dark Wind was doing a good enough job invading him as it was; his skin was growing cold, then flashing hot, the way hers did when she was sick.

_Please…_ Vanitas begged his Wayfinder.  Stupid.  But he did it anyway.   _Please… I’ve fed so much light into you… I need it back…_

He didn’t really expect anything.  Well, he did - he expected the darkness to flood him, for the Wind to take him, to take make him part of itself.

What he didn’t expect is the one thing he hoped for.  His Wayfinder began to glow.  To his surprise, the other one he touched followed suit – Ventus’s, he could see now.  Their combined warmth gave his fingers life, coursed through his body, washed his blood clean.  The light that had once threatened to consume him, that had stabbed a thousand needles into his heart – it now served to stitch the broken pieces back together.

_What… what issss thisssss?_

The Dark Wind’s voice trembled.  Vanitas smirked.

“AEROGA!”

The smoke cleared in blast that made his ears ring.  But he didn’t waste any time.  He moved off of Aqua and clutched her arms, vaguely registering that the veins of his suit around his hands had turned white, glowing with the power of the Wayfinders.

“Curaga!   _Curaga_!   _CURAGA_!”  He used the three commands in his deck, not taking any risks - except the risk that some of the Dark Wind was still inside of her.  Smoke seemed to leave her with each cast of his spell, though, so that was a good sign.

Her eyes opened.  They were still gold.  He cursed, leaping up and leaving a faint trail of white in his wake.

“Wait, Van! It’s me!” She reached for him, but he recoiled.  “You did something, but it’s not finished-- I’m still--” She cried out in pain, hand clutching at the space over her heart.

He looked up.  The cloud of darkness was coalescing, growing more distinct.  He recognized the tendrils leaking from it - it would be preparing to attack again.

“Shut up,” he told her softly, cradling her head with one hand.  His other held the two Wayfinders, still burning with power.  Just enough power for one last thing.

He closed his eyes and poured the light into her.  He felt it leave him, taking his momentary strength, sapping his brief surge of hope.

It would leave him empty.  But in return, it would leave her full.

“Van - Van, what are you doing?”  She gasped, feeling the light flow through her.  Dark smoke now poured out of her in waves, fleeing the force that opposed it.

He smirked, though he felt like throwing up.  “Saving your life.”

The last tendrils of smoke left her, joining their brothers hovering in the air.  At last, the gold faded from her eyes, revealing the soft blue beneath.  He could have stared into those eyes forever.  If they hadn’t still been in mortal danger, of course.

“ _Foolsssss… if you will not provide my esssscape…”_

The Dark Wind swept towards the portal, skimming the water like a storm. Misty tentacles reached for the light, snaking around it.  Though they couldn’t seem to pierce it, dark lighting now crackled around its edges.

“Van, I think it’s trying to close the door!”  Aqua stood, but as she did, Vanitas found himself losing his footing.  “Van-!”

She caught him as another wave of dizziness swept over him.  Channeling that much light… holding it, savoring it, and then letting it go…

“Heal!”  She cast Curaga, but it barely lent him strength, not in comparison to the tempest he’d held moments before.  “ _Heal!”_

On casting the second spell, she staggered.  They feel to their knees in the sand.

“Sh-shut up,” he mumbled.  “I didn’t save you just to get yourself killed…”

She gripped his shoulders, as if she could shake the energy back into him.  “And I’m not going to let you get yourself killed, either!  We have to get to the portal before it closes!”

He looked up, vision swimming.  The Dark Wind filled the horizon, the portal barely a glow at its center.  He wouldn’t be able to make it in time, not with all that water in between.

At least, not without help.

Reaching down deep, he searched for all of the positivity he could.  Fear clouded his heart; he pushed it aside.  Anger at the Dark Wind was there too; he punched through it.  Down below, wrapped in the center of his heart where the Wind hadn’t penetrated, was an emotion that glowed like a hot coal.  It didn’t surface easily; it had been compressed there for too long.  But when he did pull it from its hiding place, it filled him with a new reserve of strength.

He funneled it into an Inversed.  The light escaped through his palms, which had regained their red cast, and formed the largest Flood he had ever created.  Pure white, the creature stood nearly twice Aqua’s height.

As for the emotion itself… he didn’t have the time or energy to ponder on what it was.  That would only distract him right now.

The Inversed scooped them up, one in each of its skinny arms, and darted towards the water.  It didn't take long for the Dark Wind to notice the sudden appearance of more light; it sent out tendrils to strike them down.

“Oh no you don’t,” Aqua growled.  Twisting in the Flood’s grip, she called down bolts of lightning to disperse the smoke.  He would’ve cast Aeroga to help her, but creating the Flood had taken the last of his strength.  Just keeping himself securely in the Inversed’s grip was almost too much.

The Flood didn’t slow; it half-waded, half-ran through the deeper water, until Vanitas and Aqua’s legs dragged through the ocean.  All around was dark; he fixed his sight on the light at the center of the storm.

_“Sssstill fighting,”_ the Wind hissed around them, its tone growing deeper.  Aqua cast Aeroga, but it couldn’t dispel the darkness long; it swirled all around them on currents of its own.   _“Why do you resisssst?”_

“Because,” Vanitas spat, “I’m sick of the darkness.”

The portal appeared through the mist, a like a reverse black hole.  The darkness swirled around it; it had shrunk to a circle only half his height.  But it was still there.

He held his breath; even in the arms of the Flood, the water came up to his chest.  Aqua had to down her last Ether to keep casting Aeroga and Thundaga, barely keeping the mist at bay.  _Hold on, Aqua… Just a little farther…_

_“The darknesssss isss sssick of you too.”_

And with those words, the Dark Wind snuck through Aqua’s defenses.  A spike made of mist twisted around her shot of Aeroga, danced with it, and struck home.

Right at Vanitas’s chest.

He gasped, losing his grip on the Flood’s arm.

“Van!   _VAN!”_ Aqua screamed, pushing herself out of the Flood’s protective grip.  She splashed down beside him, dragging him out of the water.  “Come on!  You can make it!”

“No,” he realized, as the mist shot ice through his veins.  Over her shoulder he could see that the light was dimming.  They had seconds at most.  “But… you can.”

Her eyes widened as the Flood grabbed her around the waist.  “Van!  No!  I- I won’t leave you!”

As the freezing darkness twisted its way towards his heart, as he felt it shatter again within him, he smiled.  Without his weight slowing it down, the Flood would make it to the portal.  Aqua would live.

And now he knew what emotion the Flood was born of, the only emotion that could have obeyed his command while leaving its master to die.  The emotion that, in spite of all the ways he had grown, he had still thought himself incapable of possessing.

_I really am an idiot.  I finally find out that I can love, and I let her get away…_

Maybe… that was what made it love.  That he would give her the chance to escape, let her go save her friends.  Even if they were idiots and wouldn’t appreciate it half as much as he would’ve.

She still screamed his name, even as she was dragged away, even as he sunk into the waiting ocean.  For once, the cold water felt like a welcome alternative to the air above, the air that swarmed with darkness. In fact, with the water between him and the Dark Wind, the ice in his chest seemed to evaporate.  Maybe the ocean wasn’t so evil after all.

That was when he noticed the green glow surrounding him.  Not the ocean at all, but a Curaga spell.  With the burst of health, he kicked to the surface of the water and came up gasping.

The portal winked out, crushed by the looming darkness.  Aqua and the Flood were nowhere to be seen.  Judging by the angry roar of the Wind, they had made it.

Vanitas went so far as to laugh, though from relief or hysteria, he couldn’t tell.  “Who’s pathetic now?”

“ _YOU WILL REGRET THISSS, VANITASSSS.”_

The laugh died in his throat.  The Wind swirled above him, a funnel cloud of lightning and death.

Aqua may have escaped, but his hell had only just begun.


	25. Horde

There were only two options.  Two evils, one above, one below.  A raging storm of wind, or a dark and hungry ocean.

After a moment spent summoning his helmet, Vanitas dove into the water.  Terror swept over him, but his greater fear of the Dark Wind overhead kept it in check.  He couldn’t see anything, not with a layer of dark glass between him and the already murky water.  Maybe that was for the best though.  He would be even more terrified if he could see anything lurking in the deep.

Aqua’s Curaga, in addition to restoring more strength than he’d thought possible to his body, had also mended the crack in his helmet.  Thank the Void; the last thing he’d need would be to let that awful water in.  It was already all around him, fighting his limbs, sucking him down…

No.  No, it wasn’t.  He could touch here, which was a relief, since Aqua hadn’t taught him how to swim underwater (as if he would have ever voluntarily done _that)_ and he was still too weak to shoot himself forward with Aeroga.  But if he could just hide long enough to get to shore…

The ocean shifted, swirled, and panic gripped him.  A Shoegazer leapt from his back, only to flail and disintegrate in the water.  Then the current ripped him sideways; he tumbled head-over-heels in the suddenly deeper water.  His head surfaced just long enough to hear the Dark Wind’s voice.

_“You are a fool, Vanitassss.  You could have made it to the Realm of Light.  You could have left her.  Now you ssssee that she wassss only usssing you.”_

In spite of everything, in spite of the wind whipping about him, trying to scoop him out of the water and into the air, Vanitas laughed.  “ _That’s_ what you think happened?  You’re an even bigger idiot than I thought.”

The Dark Wind hissed, obsidian tentacles shooting out to grasp him.  He barely submerged himself in time; the mist sprayed out like steam on a hot pan when they hit the water.  Somewhere, in the irrational back of his mind, he felt that the water had protected him on purpose.  That its link to Aqua might go beyond just its name.

Crazy though it was, the thought gave him courage to strike out beneath the waves.  A little bit of magic had returned to him; he used it to cast Aero and propel himself forward.  Well, somewhat forward, somewhat down.  His helmet hit the sand at and angle, but he shook it off and crawled shamelessly along the seabed for the rest of the way.

_There better not be any kind of crab Heartless down here…_ he shuddered at the thought.  It was just an imaginary fear though; his foe above was real.  Maybe he should just stay down here… No; he would run out of air soon.  But he did take a moment to try to come up with a plan.

_Pfft, what plan?  Aqua’s gone.  I’m facing Darkness itself and I barely have the strength for a simple wind spell.  There’s no escape for me this time._

But that had never stopped him from trying.  In fact, thinking of how impossible it was only stoked his stubborn streak.

Yeah, he was going to die.  But he was going to make this monster pay while he was at it.

He burst from the shallow water, dashing the last few yards to shore.  There were a few rocks clustered together there; he threw himself behind them and summoned a Blue Sea Salt from his anger.  A quick keyblade to the face destroyed it, allowing him to scoop up the bounty it left behind.  He crushed the Ether in his hand.  Sweet magic poured into his veins, making up for the pain of destroying the Unversed.

The funnel cloud found him effortlessly.  He made the mistake of staring up - it was like looking into a black hole.  He barely rolled out of the way of a purple lightning bolt that crashed where he’d been seconds earlier, deafening him and fusing the sand into glass.

_“You ssssstill fail to sssssee.  Your friend isss gone.  Your essscape isss gone.  Your hope isss gone.”_

“You’re wrong,” he spat at the wind, shoving himself to his feet with his keyblade.  “Hope doesn’t die ‘til I say so.”

_“Sssstubborn fool.  You are one.  We are many.”_

_“_ If you’re so ‘many’ and I’m really that helpless, why don’t you just kill me?”  Vanitas challenged.  Stupid.  He was facing down a force he couldn’t defeat.  He didn’t want to die.  Keeping it talking was really his best bet.

_“Becausssse you cannot essscape.”_ It laughed.   _“Now there is no rush to dessstroy you.  You are too interesssting for that.  We may not find another light for agessss._

_“No, firssst we will make you ssssuffer.”_

One of the purple bolts hit home, striking the tip of his keyblade like it was a lightning rod.  The current shot through him, exploding his nerves, searing his skin, smothering his scream.

As soon as it struck, the mist forced itself down his throat.  To his surprise, he recognized the feeling of his own Dark Curaga.  While most of the pain remained, it kept it from killing him.

It was only then that he understood:  the Dark Wind really didn’t care if he died.  No – it didn’t want him to die.  If it had, it could have killed him a million times over.

Death would have been too easy.  It wanted to see his anguish.

Thorns of mist tore at his flesh; smoke scoured him and healed him at the same time.  Ripping, healing, burning, healing - all smothered in the cruel laugh that echoed like thunder.

_“Yesss, you had hope.  We let you have hope.  That much better when we could rip it away.”_

Their hope… their goal… their quest for the Realm of Light… They had only made it this far because the Wind had let them, had wanted them to.  Had wanted Aqua to, at least.  It was a fluke that she had made it without dragging the monster along with her.  Only Vanitas’s sacrifice had made it possible.  That was something the Dark Wind couldn't have been able to anticipate.  Vanitas hadn’t anticipated it himself.

_There are things it doesn’t know._ He clung to that thought as another purple bolt fried the air around him.   _It doesn’t know I helped Aqua escape on purpose… it doesn’t know about love._

Love.   Had that emotion returned to him?  No, the Flood had made it through the portal; he could feel its consciousness far away.  Very, very far away.  It was a testament to how strong the Inversed was that he could feel it at all. 

It would be with Aqua.  Without any commands from him, it would never leave her side.  

Mist swallowed him, choked him, flushed the thoughts from his mind.  All was consumed by the agony.

_“Yesss, your feelingssss are sssstrong.  You will lasssst ussss a long time.”_

His feelings… they _were_ strong.  Stronger than the Wind could ever know.

_I'm sorry Aqua… I wanted to leave a piece of me with you, but I need it more right now._

Stretching his mind across the gap between realms, he called to his Flood.  Of course, it couldn’t physically come to him; if it were that easy, he could’ve sent some to get help ages ago.  No, it couldn’t come as it was - but its emotions were still part of him.  And those emotions could always find their way home.

Through the void between worlds, his love returned to him.  It flooded him like a physical force, like a well of power, stronger than it had ever been before.  

_Because I used it for the first time,_ he realized.

“ _You… what…?”_

He was right: the Dark Wind didn’t understand.  It _couldn’t_ understand, no more than Vanitas himself would have been able to before.

“You say you’re so many.  Well guess what?” he taunted, glowing with the strength of his emotions.  

“ _So am I!”_

Inversed exploded from him - Floods, Protectors, Archravens, White Hot Chilis, Chrono Twisters, everything.  Everything he could pour out.  Not just his love for Aqua, though that fueled a large part of it.  His hope for her safety.  His pride in how much he’d grown.  His gratitude for her willingness to forgive him.  Every positive memory, every positive feeling, all of the best parts of himself.

He was left feeling like an empty shell.  But, he was an empty shell surrounded by an army of Inversed that rivaled the amount he used to use to flood a world.

_“Thissss… thissss changesss thingssss.”_ The Wind sounded intrigued.  The mist pulled back; the purple lightning stopped raining around him.  It seemed to gather in on itself, as if it were retreating.  Had he really scared it off that easily?

Of course not.  He watched it happen with a sick fascination.  The funnel of smoke pulled up, then lowered to the ground.

And then the eyes appeared.  Hundreds of them.  Bright yellow Heartless eyes, blinking open all across the surface of the dark cloud.  The cloud which was growing more defined, morphing into… something hideous.  Hundreds of Heartless antennae, limbs, faces, all jutting out of one gruesome body.  He had thought the keyblade-eating Heartless had been disgusting; this was a whole new level.

_“Count yourssself lucky, Vanitassss.”_ Hundreds of mouths - Wyvern, Defender, Darkball, some he’d never seen before - said in unison.  “ _You are the only human to ssssee our true form.  Now, you will ssssee how well your pathetic feelingssss do againssst our darknesssss.”_

Then the Heartless conglomerate swept towards him in a deadly wave.

_“Go!”_ He commanded, pointing his keyblade for his Inversed to charge.  His own wave of whites and pastels crashed against the flood of purples and blacks.  Pain tore through him as some of his creations were clawed and chewed apart, but he forced it into a corner of his mind.  Aqua and her friends had destroyed Unversed in countless numbers before; he could handle this monster doing the same.  At least, that was what he told himself.

Instead of anger and hatred forcing their way back into him when an Inversed died, love and hope refilled him.  It was hard to let it go, push the positivity back into more of his creations.  Hard to keep that hope flowing at all – and harder still not to let negative emotions taint it.  If one Unversed of his fear or rage escaped, his whole army might turn on it.  The Dark Wind – or maybe the Dark Horde would be a better name now – would use that opportunity to strike.

He stayed pressed against the rock, digging his heels into the sand as Inversed coursed in and out of him.  The pain was nearly as bad as when the Dark Wind itself had tortured him.  Still, he forced himself to keep searching out the positive, the light.

_Aqua is alive.  The Dark Wind has a physical form.  That means I can hurt it._ He wasn’t attacking it with his hatred – hatred that he certainly felt, but kept bottled up like a Prize Pod trying not to spill its ingredients.  Instead, he attacked with his hope.  Hope that if he could defeat this monster, he could find a way back to Aqua.  A vain hope, probably.  But he didn’t think about that.  Any hope that gave him strength was worth holding on to.

While spawning a few Mandrakes from ones that had died, he forced himself up on top of the rock.  He needed a better vantage point to see how his Inversed were doing.

To his surprise, and in spite of the torment he felt at them being ripped apart, they weren’t doing half bad.  Yes, he could feel each one’s demise, but each one brought down a couple Heartless with it.  The Dark Horde was breaking apart, sending out clusters of Neoshadows and Darkballs and other Heartless to face off against his creations.  

_“Your feelingssss are not sssso sssstrong after all,”_ the Heartless said in unison.  “ _You will weaken.  You will lose hope.  But we can alwaysssss gather more Heartlesssss.”_

“You underestimate me,” Vanitas shouted.  “I’ve been the darkness before.  I know you.  But you will never know me!”

_“I have ssssseen your heart.  There isssss ssstill fear there.”_

Fear.  The first thing the darkness preyed on, along with anger.  Yes, the emotions both still churned in his heart, fighting to escape in the stream of Inversed that flowed from him.  He could only lock them up for so long.

So he’d get rid of them.

He faced the battlefield, staring down the monster that continued to divide and reform, picking off his Inversed one by one. 

_It’s just a Heartless.  A lot of Heartless.  I don’t have to be afraid.  What’s the worst it can do?  Torture me?  Kill me?  It can’t escape.  It can’t get to Aqua._

He had accepted that he could die.  He hoped he wouldn’t, but he accepted that he could, and it would be about the same as being trapped here.  If there was any other kind of hell, he doubted it could be worse than this. 

So why fight?  Why not just die?  If he gave up, the Dark Horde might kill him by accident before it could torture him any more.  That was the struggle that played out before him:  to have the strength to fight, he needed to hope for something brighter to come.  To destroy his fear, he needed to accept that the worst that could happen wasn’t that bad.  Could he not fear death, and still hope to live at the same time?

“Yeah,” he realized, a strange peace sinking into him.  “I think I can.”

He would do all he could do.  That would either be enough, or it wouldn’t.  But he wouldn’t die before finding out.

His Inversed surged forward with renewed strength.  Axe Flappers sliced through Wyverns; Sonic Blasters targeted Darkballs; Shoegazers stomped Shadows.  Could he… could he actually be _winning?_

The thought, true or not, spurred on his Inversed.  He cast Curaga, healing some of the physical strain creating so many had put on his body.  It had been so long since he’d tried creating a horde this big, and never before with positive emotions, that he was amazed it had worked at all.  Much less this well.

The Dark Horde hissed, and the Heartless all backed up at once, the free-roaming ones as well as the giant monstrosity.  It was much smaller than it had originally been; for all of the Horde’s talk, it didn’t appear to have created any more Heartless.  Meanwhile, Vanitas could keep up his Inversed as long as he still had positive emotions.  And as long as he was living, of course.

The Horde seemed to realize this.  It released a column of Wyverns that melded and split apart, pulsing in a giant column through the sky.  Heading over the Inversed, straight for him.

A Protector leapt up onto his rock, throwing its arms around him.  Archravens and Axe Flappers took flight, homing in on the airborne enemy.  Shielded by the Protector’s embrace, Vanitas didn’t see it happen, but he felt his Inversed being shredded by talons and wings.  When he did get the chance to look up, though, the Wyverns were gone as well, vanquished back into dark smoke.

“Not so… tough… after all,” he said through ragged gasps, casting Curaga again.  He could never thank Aqua enough for training him in that spell.

_“You have fought well.  But today is jussst the beginning.  We will ssssssee you, Vanitasssss.”_

And with those words, the hydra-like Heartless slowly dissolved back into mist, blowing back towards the center of the Realm of Darkness.  It retreated, flying over the arching stones, until it vanished in the distance.

Vanitas fell to his knees, the Protector barely keeping him from tumbling off the rock.

“We… we did it?”  He asked, dumbfounded.  Not that the Inversed could answer.  Drawing a deep breath, he pulled most of them back into himself, leaving the Protector by his side along with a few others.  If this was just a fake-out, he wanted to be ready.

That many Inversed flowing back into him felt almost like being thrown into the cold ocean again.  Shocking, but it made him feel more alive.  More whole.

Why had the Dark Wind left?  It would have killed him eventually.  He was pretty sure of that.  Was this some kind of mind game?  Or did it just need to collect more Heartless to amass into itself?

He slid down from the rock, his Protector hopping off next to him, and huddled in the shadowed side.  With the Dark Wind gone, he had the first opportunity to realize just how alone he really was.  The Protector held him close, sensing his loneliness, but it wasn’t the same.

_Aqua… What am I going to do without you?_ A hole seemed to open in his chest.  It felt kind of like he was trying to release an Unversed, but there was nothing there.  Aqua was gone.  She was safe, but she was gone.  He would never see her again.  He’d sacrificed himself, and for what?  She was never going to be able to thank him, much less repay him.

_Idiot.  You know why you did it, and it wasn’t for that._ It was because he loved her.  In what way, he didn’t know; it wasn’t like he had much experience with love.  But as the hole in his heart grew wider and wider, he became ever more sure of his feelings.

“She was the first one to make me feel like a real person,” he murmured to the Protector, as if it could comfort him.  It did pat him softly on the back, a rather ineffective form of sympathy.  “She was the first person who ever cared…”

And she would be the last.

Tears dripped from his eyes, the hollow sadness he had been pushing aside for so long finally catching up to him.  His hands unlooped the Wayfinder from his belt; miraculously, the fragile-looking thing had survived the chaos of the day.

_At least… I’ll always have a piece of her._

He pressed the red porcelain to his lips. The faintest trace of light touched his nose, the scent of clean cotton.  Her scent.

There would be no sleeping tonight, not with the Dark Horde out there, ready to strike when he least expected.  There would probably be no sleeping again as long as he lived.

So instead, he held his Wayfinder close, and he cried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think there should only be one chapter left. There may be an epilogue if everything doesn’t fit well in it. School starts next Tuesday though and I still have to do a ton of math stuff I’ve been assigned before the semester starts, so hopefully it doesn’t end up too long.
> 
> I've been wanting to write parts of this chapter forever; I just thought the idea of Vanitas fighting an army of Heartless with an army of Unversed would be super legit. Hope it came out at least a little bit as cool as it was in my head.


	26. A Taste of Death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lol I should have been doing math today but my brain couldn't take it anymore so I wrote a whole chapter of this instead XD

It struck again, as promised.  First in the whirlwind, then in its nightmarish “true form.”  This time, its tactics changed: rather than separating to fight his Inversed in groups, it remained a tight cluster of heads and bodies, eyes blinking across its skin, wings and claws stretching out to destroy.  In one body, it could force its way through his Inversed army more effectively, pressing ever closer to his rock sanctuary.  He had to order his creations to go on the offensive and tear chunks out of the giant Heartless, which seemed to slow it down.  A few Archravens he put on a different task – collecting items his dead Inversed dropped.  He would need every advantage he could get.  A Hi-Potion or Ether could be the difference between having the strength to hold in Unversed of pain, and not.

But holding in the pain was an easy task compared to bridling his anger.  This force of evil was the reason he no longer had Aqua.  And for that, it would pay.

_Determination,_ he told himself.  _Determination.  Not anger._ He wished he could free his Unversed, set two armies to attack the Dark Horde.  But it would be useless, and more than that, horribly dangerous.

_Stay strong.  Don’t give in to the darkness.  Aqua wouldn’t want that._

So he fought.  And he fought.  Most of his strength went to creating Inversed.  How he wished he could just ram a keyblade right through the Dark Horde, but that was risky beyond reason.  He could afford to cast spells from a distance, though.  Thunder, Blizzard, Fire.  Most of his magic he saved for Curaga.

After what felt like days of fighting, his Inversed weakened the Dark Hide enough that it chose to retreat again.

_“One more day.  Then you are ourssssss.”_

Two days.  He had lasted two days.  Today his Inversed army had started at about eighty percent the size it had been the day before.  How much weaker would it be tomorrow?  When he went another night without rest?  When the loss of Aqua sunk even deeper into his heart?

_Stay… strong…_

XXX

The third day.  Vanitas waited, and waited, never taking his eyes from the rocks in the distance.  When would it come?  He almost wished the monster would just come for him now and get it over with.  Waiting was playing tricks on him; he felt he could see mist rising from every shadow.

Eventually his wish was granted.  The Dark Wind came storming over the land at a furious speed.  He barely had time to concentrate, to pull his positivity from the deep corners of his heart that it had sunk to.

Not so many Inversed this time.  That wasn’t good.  But the Dark Wind was taking a different strategy again; it didn’t take on its Horde incarnation yet.  It swirled above him, dropping bolts of lighting like spears all around.  The air was charged; the sand fused to black glass in patches that made the land look leprous.

His smaller contingent of Inversed came to his aid, forming a protective wall above and around him.  Like he was at the center of a pastel dome.  Even a few Prize Pods, which couldn’t attack, hovered overhead ready to take a blast for him.

“Thank you,” he whispered.  He wasn’t sure why; it was like thanking himself, really.  But in the past two days, he had come to feel more and more that the Inversed had some degree of life in themselves.  “I’m probably just going insane…” Not that he would know it if he was.

He stuck his keyblade through a gap in his Inversed, shooting Aeroga and Tornado as often as he could.  This wind belonged to _him,_ not this demon.

The fight dragged on.  His Inversed were swept up into the storm; he withdrew them and created new ones. The endless cycle of pain and hope.  Desperate, desperate hope.

He didn’t know how to hurt the Wind, only how to keep it at bay.  Parts of it seemed to disappear when they came into contact with his Inversed, though, as if it had to sacrifice itself to destroy them.  Light and darkness, cancelling each other out.  It was the only headway he made, the only thing that kept his hope alive.

_“Tell usssss, Vanitasssss.  How doesss it feel to play a game that you know you will lose?”_

“Feels great,” he snapped back sarcastically.  “Most fun I’ve had in forever.”

The Wind chuckled, sending out tendrils to pry past his Inversed.   _“Enjoy it while you can, then.  Every bit of fun you have issss one more thing for usss to desssstroy.”_

Little did the Dark Wind know, it had just given him an idea.  Fun was a positive emotion.  Now, how to make this fight more fun?

No, he didn’t even have to do that – he just had to _feel_ that this fight was more fun.  It was all in his head and heart.  _Just think of it like a contest.  Like the race with Aqua.  You love a good challenge._

Well, this was his greatest challenge yet.  What could be more fun than that?

He gulped a potion and tossed the bottle aside, where it shattered against a glassy spot of ground.  “Bring it on, freak.”

The Wind did.  It threw its whole amorphous self against his Inversed barrier, forcing smoke in through the cracks.  But he was ready for it.  More Inversed leapt from him, small Glidewinders with happy eyes.  They rushed to plug the leaks, moving at a speed unrivaled by any of his other creations.  Meanwhile, he ran for one gap himself, the only one left.  The one the Dark Wind would try to squeeze through to smother him.

But that wouldn’t happen.  Not today.

Vanitas bared his keyblade at the gap, then released the strongest Tornado he could summon.  It ripped through a couple Blobmobs and Jellyshades on its way through, but it got the job done: the Dark Wind went flying back with it, caught in the whirlwind.

He smirked.  “Maybe this actually _is_ fun.”

It must have done more damage than he’d realized, too, because the Dark Wind didn’t come back.  Not yet, anyway.  He still felt he could hear its hiss, though.

_“Yesss, enjoy yoursssself now.  It meansssss nothing to usssss.”_

He slumped to the ground, recalling most of his Inversed.  The sky was clear overhead.  No mist waited for him.

“Looks like we’re gonna live another day.”  He grinned, looking around to share his victory Aqua.  Then it hit him again.

_She’s gone, idiot.  No matter how hard you fight, she’s never coming back.  You don’t_ want _her to come back._

His fist clenched around his Wayfinder.  _I’m never going to be able to tell her how much she meant to me… how much she still means…_

He didn’t need to tell her.  He’d saved her life.  That said more than words.  He held his Wayfinder to his chest, feeling just a tiny bit closer to her for it, and said the words she’d never be able to hear.

“I love you, Aqua.”  He shuddered, feeling cold despite the White Hot Chilis hovering around him.  “I miss you…”

XXX

Hi-Potions weren’t as good as sleep.  Not in the long run.  By day four, he was exhausted.  Delirious.

_“I’m coming, Van!  Hold on!”_

Aqua’s voice called to him, a figment of his mind or a trick of the Dark Horde, he couldn’t tell.  Its mouths didn’t move with the words, but that could mean anything.

_“She issssn’t coming back.  She abandoned you to your fate.”_ The mouths did say that.  As if they could hear the voice too, or could read his thoughts.  Tugging him in two directions, giving him hope, ripping it away.

That was one hope he didn’t use to fuel his Inversed, because it was a hope he shouldn’t have.  She couldn’t come back to him.  She’d _better_ not.

Apparently desperation could be positive, at least when it came to his desperation to live, because that was the base for most of his Inversed now.  They were weakening, barely keeping the Dark Horde from steamrolling over him.  He had to back up to the ocean to keep from being surrounded; the Heartless seemed hesitant to step into the water.

_“Van!  I won’t leave you!”_

He gritted his teeth against the imaginary voice.  Tried to shake it out of his head, but another voice took its place.

_“Even if she were here, why would she save you, Vanitasssss?  You belong here, with usssss.”_

Lies.  He didn’t belong here.  Did he?  By this point, he was a creature of pain.  His Inversed fell around him, eaten by the mismatched jaws of the Horde.  Darkness would be easier, darkness never would have drawn the attention of this monster…

_“Stay strong!”_ Aqua’s voice called again.  The Dark Horde laughed, echoing over the crashing of waves.

_“She will never care for you.  Not the way you care for her.”_

_“Van, you have to keep fighting!  Don’t give up!”_

_“She is of light.  You would only have been her shadow.”_

_“You’re stronger!  I know you are!”_

_“Lissssten to yourssself.  Your own mind betrayssss you. It will not be long now.”_

“SHUT _UP_!”  Vanitas finally yelled, sweeping out an arm.  Floods sprang from it – blue Floods.  Unversed Floods.

They bolted towards the battlefield.  The Inversed that had been fighting the Dark Horde froze.  The giant Heartless beast lunged forward, running on a mass of broken-looking legs, trampling the creatures of light in its path. 

Vanitas collapsed to his knees in the shallow waves, lacking the strength to cast Curaga.  He’d run out of Potions hours ago.  He hadn’t been able to spare the Inversed to collect them.

It was over. 

Pain ripped through him – the deaths of his Inversed.  A taste of the death he was about to face.  He held his Wayfinder one last time, and then he closed his eyes.

Warmth.  That wasn’t what dying was supposed to feel like, was it?  Maybe compared to the Realm of Darkness, it made sense.  But no.  He could hear the Dark Horde’s laugh a few yards away.  So what…?

The Wayfinder.  Of course, it couldn’t be anything else.  What magic had Aqua programmed it with this time?  Did it know he was about to die?  And if so, why in the Void hadn’t it done anything _sooner_?

A beam of light shot towards it, nearly stabbing straight through him.  He was forced to drop the charm and roll out of the way, splashing water on his mask as he did so.

“What the—?”

Then he saw the portal of light.  And so did the Dark Horde.  Vanitas momentarily forgotten, it began to dissolve back into its Wind form.  In the meantime, he watched what came through the portal with utter disbelief.

A keyblade glider soared out of the light, carrying an armored figure, a silver-haired man, and… a giant mouse?

Forget the mouse – he would recognize that cobalt armor anywhere.  He wasn’t sure whether or laugh or curse.  It didn’t really matter, because he didn’t have the strength to do either.

_“The girl… she hasssss returned?”_ The Dark Wind didn’t have a face, but if it did, Vanitas figured its jaw would’ve dropped.

“Heck yeah she has.”  He couldn’t stop himself from smiling, even though he also wanted to punch her.  She was _safe,_ dang it!  She didn’t need to come swooping in to get her butt kicked along with him!

He loved her for it anyway.

The glider hovered beside him, and the armored figure extended a hand.  He took it without hesitation.

_“No!  He issss OURS!”_ The Dark Wind screamed, shooting out tendrils towards them.

“You’re wrong!”  Aqua yelled through her helmet.  “He is _mine!”_

His heart leaped at her words.  Unfortunately, that didn’t stop the misty tendrils from sweeping her and her companions off of the glider.  The other two rolled across the sandy ground, but he kept hold of her hand, so she stumbled rather than fell.

“Aqua,” he breathed, dismissing his mask.  Stupid move, with the Dark Wind still trying to kill them.  For the moment, though, he didn’t care; he wanted to see and smell her without the layer of glass.  “You idiot.  Why did you come back?”

She took off her helmet, revealing confusion that hardened to a scowl.  “What do you mean, why did I come back?  I came back to save you, of course!  You should be thanking—!”

Her voice cut off as he threw his arms around her.  It didn’t feel quite the same with her in armor, but her scent had been restored to the pure freshness of clean laundry.  That was how he knew she was real, and not a figment of his delirium.  His body shook with suppressed sobs, but he managed to say, “Thank you, Aqua.  Thank you.  I—”

“Hey, I hate to cut this short, but…” The silver-haired man called out from across the beach, where he’d stood and summoned his own keyblade.  It looked like a bat wing with a feathered one sticking out of it, a shape he didn’t recognize.  Who was this guy?  Why was he with Aqua?

“Right,” she said, barely throwing up a barrier in time to stop more daggers of mist.  “You need healing?”

He raised an eyebrow, as if to say, _I’ve been fighting the demons of hell while you’ve been picking up strays in the Realm of Light.  What do you think?_

She smiled and cast Curaga over him twice.  He swore it felt better than when he cast it himself.

“Alright, on three, make a break for the glider,” she instructed, pointing to where it had crash landed in the sand.  Right in the middle of the Dark Wind.  He could only see it because of a blue light that glowed at its front – had she attached her Wayfinder to it?

Aqua put on her helmet; he reformed his mask.  “One – two – _three!”_

The barrier dissolved; mist came pouring in.  They half-ran, half-teleported to the fallen glider.  Despite the mask keeping out the smoke, he still felt like coughing.

_“YOU HAVE MADE A FATAL MISSSSTAKE.  NOW YOU WILL BOTH BE_ OURS _.”_

The voice thundered around them, shaking his bones.  Then a gale force wind swept Aqua away from him, bashing her against the side of a rock.

“Aqua!”

She groaned, but made it to her feet.  That armor was good for something.  “Go!  Get the glider!”

He was closer.  He could hardly see anything, even by the trail of light connecting his and Aqua’s Wayfinders.

His Wayfinder.  He had to get it!  But he couldn’t, not now.  First he had to focus on surviving.

The glider’s pieces had disconnected; he tugged one free of the sand, only to have no idea what to with it.  _Forget this._ He tossed it aside and summoned Void Gear, then called up a Tornado.  It did as he wanted and cleared him a space to see.

As it had before, the Dark Wind was now focusing on the portal, surrounding it in purple lightning.  The mouse – he _did_ know that mouse, it was the stupid one who’d helped Aqua kill him – and the man were casting Aeroga and Stopga, trying to sweep the mist away.  In spite of their efforts, the portal was slowly closing.  They wouldn’t have much time. 

So Vanitas dug into his emotions and got to work.  This time, he didn’t have to reach far.  All he had to do was look towards Aqua, who was now trying to piece the glider back together herself, and the strength he needed was there.  He channeled it carefully this time, not letting the feelings pick their own form.  He needed something particular.

The light bloomed from his outstretched hands.  Bloomed and grew into a giant, light yellow Archraven.

“Forget the glider!”  He called to Aqua, climbing onto the Inversed’s back.  Though it looked like a bird, its skin was soft and smooth rather than feathered.  “Get on!”

Glancing over her shoulder, she finally scooped up her Wayfinder, threw its cord over her neck, and let the glider dissolve into a shower of sparks.  It reappeared as a keyblade in her hand.  Why hadn’t she just done that in the first place?

She ran and leapt onto the Archraven, clinging to the edge of its wing with her free hand.  “Don’t forget Riku and Mickey!”

Riku and Mickey.  Must be the other idiots.  Idiots because they decided to go on a suicide mission to the Realm of Darkness, to save someone they’d never even met.  Or, in one of their cases, had helped kill.  They must have really cared about Aqua.

_Hopefully not too much,_ he thought, narrowing his eyes at the silver-hared one as he jumped on.  He was taller than Vanitas, and wore a pitch black coat.  Mickey looked more nervous as he accepted Riku’s help onto the Inversed’s back.

“Don’t worry,” Aqua told him.  “It’s made of light.”

“I suppose we’ve got bigger things to worry about anyways, don’t we?”  He asked in a rather annoying high-pitched voice, pointing to the portal.  All of the mist had borne down on it when Riku and Mickey had stopped defending it, and it now looked barely large enough for them to squeeze through.

But squeeze they would.  “Hold on tight!”

_“No!  NO!  WE HAD YOU!  YOU WERE OURSSSS!”_

“Exactly,” Vanitas said with a smirk.  “ _Were.”_

And then, with dark lightning crackling all around them, with tendrils of smoke grasping for them in vain, they shot through the closing portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought this might be the last chapter, but I decided to split it and have an epilogue instead, I think it will flow better that way. So stay tuned! Also, thanks for all the reviews on that last chapter, I’m glad so many people liked it! I hope the way this all ends will be satisfying. C:
> 
> (Did the chapter title scare anyone? :P It was the best title I could come up with that didn’t give away actual spoilers.)


	27. Epilogue

For that one moment, suspended in the light, spanning the void between realms, Vanitas knew what true freedom felt like.  His anger and hate were purged from his heart.  The fear of the darkness melted away. 

It was like being reborn.

He tumbled off the Archraven and landed on his back when the portal spat them out onto sand.   _Sand?_ He panicked, thinking that the light had rejected him, that it had seen inside his heart and decided he’d be better off in the Realm of Darkness after all.  But no, it was way too bright for that – a real sun shone down from a light blue sky. 

_A real sun…_ As much as it burned, he dismissed his mask to feel the warmth on his face.  _Real warmth._

He laughed – not a chuckle or a cackle, but his first laugh of true joy in… well, since he’d lost Aqua. 

As if his thought had summoned her, she stood over him.  With her helmet now off, the sun’s glow outlined her face, like her own personal halo.  It still didn’t shine as brightly as her smile.  “How does it feel to be back in the light, Van?”

“Good.”  No, that was an understatement.  “Amazing,” he said honestly, for the first time in forever.  He could’ve created another Inversed army right then and there.  Then the fatigue hit him, like he could sleep for a million years.  Or – his stomach growled angrily – he could maybe _eat_ for a million years.  “Actually, I’m starving.”

She laughed.  “I thought you might.  I felt that way when I… well, when you saved me.  It’s as if the last twelve years without real food all catch up to you at once.”

“Wait,” he bolted upright. “The last _twelve years?”_

“That was the last time I saw Aqua,” Mickey said, strolling over on his tiny legs.  And people thought his Unversed were creepy.  “It might have been longer.”

“But – it was forty-five days!”  Even during his fight with the Dark Wind, he hadn’t lost count.  Forty-five days since Aqua became his friend.  He guessed that meant they’d spent more days in the Realm of Darkness before that, but still.  Enough to make up twelve years?  Could time in the dark realm really be that distorted?

Aqua blushed, guessing what he was referring to.  “How long did you fight the Dark Wind, Van?”

“Four days,” he replied.  “Including the day I saved you.”

Riku grunted from a few feet away, where he was petting the giant yellow Archraven.  “Not bad.”

Vanitas scowled.  Who was that guy?  He’d kept the _darkness itself_ at bay for _four whole days_.  That wasn’t just “ _not bad.”_ And his Archraven wasn’t a pet!  It only annoyed him more that his Inversed cawed happily at the attention.

“Four days,” Aqua breathed.  “I’m so sorry, Van – I tried to come sooner.  I needed help to find a way back to the Realm of Darkness, and I hoped that since so much time had passed here while we were gone, only a few hours or a day might have passed there.”

“How long was it for you?”  He asked, standing and striding over to his Archraven.  As he placed his hand on it, its light withdrew back into him.

“Fifty days,” she whispered.  He whirled around, ignoring Riku’s wide-eyed surprise at the Inversed’s disappearance.

“ _Fifty days?”_

She winced.  “I tried to come as quickly as I could!  I had to find a way to travel the worlds again, and then arranging an expedition to the World That Never Was—”

“Aqua, Aqua, I’m not mad!”  He laughed, more to relieve her tension than anything.  “I just can’t believe you still tried to rescue me, after all that time.  I thought you would’ve…”

“Given up on you?”  She put her hands on her hips.  “How long have you known me, Van?  Did I give up on Ven?  Did I give up on Terra?”

“No.”  He grimaced, half for doubting her, half because of her mentions of her other friends. 

“Then of course I wouldn’t have given up on you.  No matter what.”  She suddenly pulled him close, into a tight hug.  He couldn’t help a slight hiss of pain at being pressed against her metal armor, weak as he still was.  “Oh.  Sorry…”  She seemed to realize.  She let go and pressed the small plates on her shoulders, magically retracting it into them.  Only then did he realize she still hadn’t gotten her regular clothes back.

“You kept the suit?”  He asked.  Her armor pieces were strapped to her upper arms, but underneath she still wore the navy and magenta suit he’d created for her, frayed skirt-thing and all.  Her blue Wayfinder was somehow back to hanging from her belt.

“I – well, um, yes.”  Her face flushed bright red, though he had no idea why.

“But you hated it.  Heck, _I_ hate this thing.”  He tugged at the veins on his arm.  “You don’t need it anymore, Aqua.  The darkness won’t get you here.”  _I won’t let it._

“I know.  I just… well, for one, I haven’t found my old clothes yet.  Riku and Mickey suggested we leave the Land of Departure as Castle Oblivion until we can go through more of Organization XIII’s research.”

“The three fairies offered to make you new clothes,” Riku said.  “I for one would’ve taken them up on it.  Vanitas is right.  Those suits are awful.”

Vanitas raised an eyebrow.  He’d have to talk with this Riku later.  He sounded too interesting for his own good.  Bad enough that he already had to share Aqua’s friendship with Terra and Ventus…

Aqua blushed deeper, if that was possible.  “Alright, fine.  You’ll think I’m silly, but I actually kept it because… it reminded me of you.”

Mickey and Riku gave them some space, looking uncomfortable.  He doubted Mickey approved of his friendship with Aqua, regardless of how the black-coated mouse had helped him.  And as for Riku… well, he really didn’t know much about the silver-haired man.  They walked down the beach towards a low wooden bridge.  _Finally._

“You’re right.  I do think you’re ‘silly.’” The word felt wrong in his mouth, like a distorted version of _stupid._ Not that he would call Aqua stupid.  “But only because you’re assuming I would find that silly.”

Surprise and confusion mingled on her face.  “Excuse me for that, Van, but you find just about everything silly.  Besides, it’s one of those things that Terra would have teased me for, being sentimental and all.” Then she muttered, “Being ‘such a girl’ sometimes…”

“You’ve got three major things wrong there.”  He said, trying not to scowl.  He was safe, and he was with Aqua; that was enough to help him suppress the impulse.  “One, I don’t find things silly.  I find them stupid.  There’s a big difference.  Two, I am _not_ Terra.  Don’t imply that I’m like him again.”

The sharpness in his voice made her blink, but for once she didn’t question it.  “Okay, Van.”

He nodded.  “And the third thing.  I don’t think it’s stupid that you kept the suit.  I… I’m glad you did.”  _Because maybe, if it reminded you of me, you thought of me even half as much as I thought of you._

She smiled, some of her embarrassment leaking away.  “I hope you won’t be offended if I get some new clothes now, since you’re back.”

He laughed.  “Aqua, I’d be thrilled to go find some new clothes right now.  I haven’t worn anything besides this stupid suit since I was part of Ventus.”  His stomach growled again, angry at being ignored.  “But let’s get food first.”

He looked up from his growling stomach, only to see her covering her mouth with her hand.  Then suddenly she let out the loudest laugh he’d ever heard. 

“What?”  He demanded, a scowl tugging at him again.  “I just want some food!  Is that too much to ask?”

“No, Van—!”  She could hardly hold the laughter in; she crouched with her hands on her knees.  “I’m sorry, it was just too funny.  The image of you going shopping…!”

“What’s so funny about that?”  He crossed his arms.  “We could steal clothes instead of buying them, if that would save my reputation.”

“No, no, it’s just that Terra and Ven would _die_ before going shopping with me.”  She finally got ahold of herself, wiping a tear from her eye.

“Good.  All the more reason to go.  But first, food.”  He stretched out his hand, wondering if he could open dark corridors again.  To his surprise, the portal of darkness appeared, standing up out of the sand.

Aqua’s eyes bulged.  “Van, close that _now!”_

“What?  Are you determined to keep me starving?”

“Just do it!”  She ordered.  The authority in her voice, and his trust of her, compelled him to obey.  She breathed an audible sigh of relief.  “Do you know how those corridors work?”

“Uh… they’re made out of darkness,” he replied.  “But we still have our dark suits.  We would be safe.”

She shook her head.  “No, Van, safe is the _last_ thing we’d be.  I learned about them from Riku and Master Yen Sid when we were planning to rescue you.  They use shortcuts through the Realm of Darkness to reach different worlds.”

He went pale, realizing what he’d almost done.  “…Oh.”  It was a horrible understatement.  If he had stepped through that corridor, and the Dark Wind had been waiting for him… or worse, if it was able to come through the dark corridor in a way it couldn’t through the door to light…

“Exactly.”  She nodded.  “We can use my glider instead.  Riku showed me a few places to eat in Radiant Garden that you might like.  They’re more used to outsiders than this world; we would stick out here like… well, like two people dressed in all black in the middle of summer.”  She smiled.

“We’re not in all black.  Your suit’s just really dark blue,” he pointed out for argument’s sake.  “Who’s this _Riku_ guy, anyway?”

“Oh, I didn’t even introduce you, did I?”  Her head swiveled, looking for him, but he and the mouse were sitting far away on a curved tree at the end of the bridge.

“Don’t worry about it.  I can always meet the los— uh, the guy later.”  Aqua tended not to like it when he called her friends losers.  Even if ninety percent of the time it was true.  Besides, the two had helped Aqua rescue him; he could give them a break for that. She’d probably want him to thank them, too… Ugh.  _Sometimes it was easier being a heart of darkness_ , he thought, even though he knew it wasn’t true. “Forget it.  We can talk about all that after we get some food.”

She smiled, summoning her keyblade and activating her armor again.  Then she threw Stormfall like she was attempting a strike raid, but it flew off into the distance only to swoop back as a fully-functional glider.

“You’ll have to teach me how to do that,” he said, staring in amazement.  Could Void Gear turn into a glider?  He bet it would make the most epic glider ever.

“You mean, you never…?”

“Xehanort wanted me using the corridors.  You know, ‘darkness darkness darkness’ and all that.”  He shrugged.  Aqua winced.

“There’s something you should know, Van…”  She looked torn, but he stared until she continued.  “Xehanort is back.”

“ _What?”_ If he’d had a drink right then, he would’ve spit it out.  “But you said it’s been twelve years!  That old geezer has to be dead by now!  Unless—”

“He did possess Terra,” she replied solemnly, nodding.  “And apparently more people than that.  Riku and Sora have been fighting different incarnations of him for the past two years.”

_Sora._ That name hit him again, the same way it had when Aqua had said it the first time.  That had been the first time she’d seen him without his mask.  She’d said… he reminded her of him.  It was crazy, but just from the name, he could feel some sort of connection.

And then, with no reasonable explanation, he knew.  It was just a feeling, but a feeling so strong and sudden that it had to be right.

“That’s where Ventus is,” he said, forgetting all about Xehanort for the moment.  “He’s with Sora.”

“Van – how would you—?”

“I just know.  Trust me.”

“…I do,” she finally said, baring a small smile.  “Thank you, Van.  I wanted to go looking for him and Terra – for a way to restore them – but I… I couldn’t.  Not yet.  Not knowing the danger you were facing.”

His heart did a cartwheel at that.  _You hear that, Ventus, Terra?  She saved me first!_ Granted, he was in the most obvious, immediate danger, but still.  That did bring up another question, though.

“So… is that what you’re going to do now?”  He swallowed.  They were both safe.  She’d fulfilled any debt she owed him by rescuing him from the Dark Wind.  She had no real reason to stay with him now.

“As soon as I can.”  Her smile faded a little, brow creasing in worry.  Vanitas tried to prepare himself, holding in a Scrapper of nervousness.  She was going to say it, wasn’t she?  That their journey had ended.

“Van… I know you don’t like Terra, and… well, I’m not really sure how you feel about Ventus… but would you come with me?”

He blinked.  “What?”  Had he really heard that right?

She looked away, her hair falling into her face.  “I understand if you would prefer not to.  It will be dangerous, I’m sure, and you might be tired of me after so long…”

“Aqua.”  He put his hands on her shoulders.  The touch was in just the right place to accidentally disengage her armor; it retracted in sparks of light, leaving her in her dark suit again.  “That is the single stupidest thing I have ever heard.”

She looked up.  Or rather, down.  Void, sometimes it was embarrassing being shorter than her.

“You don’t have a clue, do you?”  He asked, voice soft in spite of the harsh words.  “Aqua, I thought I was never going to see you again.  Do you know what that felt like?”

“…Bad?”  She took a sheepish guess.  He snorted at the understatement.

“Imagine cutting out your heart and stomping on it.”

“Do you think that might be a bit of an exaggeration?”  She asked with a blush.

“Shut up.  I know how I felt,” he grumbled back.  “You have no idea how much I missed you.”

“ _I_ have no idea?”  Her face grew redder, but this time it seemed to be from indignation.  “You missed me for four days; I missed you for fifty!  And the whole time, I was afraid I’d be too late!  For all I knew you’d be dead before I found you!”

He wanted to snap back that _he’d_ been afraid he’d be dead.  But he stopped.  “…Did you say you missed me?”

“Of course I missed you!”  She shouted in exasperation.  “You’re my best friend, Van!”

The words felt like a hug, delivered with the force of a slap to the face.  It made his head spin.  “I’m… your best friend?  More than Terra and Ventus?”

“Well…”  She swallowed, “that’s hard to explain.”

“Why?”  He demanded, ignoring the persistent rumble of his stomach.  Unfortunately, Aqua didn’t.

“You’re hungry.  We can talk more over lunch.”  She leapt up onto her glider, then engaged her armor again.  In a flash of light, the cobalt plates swept over the navy veins of her suit.  “Hop on.”

“Uh…”  He wasn’t really sure _where_ to hop on.  It looked like the pieces didn’t really connect even when the thing wasn’t broken.  He settled for perching on the thin blue piece that Aqua had braced her feet against.

“You’ll need to hold on a little better than that.”

“And what exactly am I supposed to hold on to?”  He grumbled back.  She answered his question by placing his arms around her waist, as if it should’ve been obvious.  Well, he wouldn’t complain about that.  Even if her armor wasn’t the most comfortable thing to hold onto.

“Be sure not to fall off.  The Lanes Between can be dangerous.”

He nodded, summoning his mask.  “Got it.”

Her glider shot out a portal of light, and then they were off.

XXX

He had to hand it to Aqua – or, by association, Riku – the restaurant she chose was fantastic.  Just a small little hole-in-the-wall café, but the burgers were _amazing_.  Of course, he hadn’t had real food in over ten years; the dirt off the bottom of his boots probably would’ve tasted amazing.

Aqua told her story, how the portal had landed her in the Land of Departure, in the chamber where she had left Ventus.  The place was called Castle Oblivion now, apparently; she had wandered its halls with his giant Flood, searching for a way out, until she met Riku and Mickey.  They were trying to find information on this group called “Organization XIII,” which had something to do with Xehanort.  It was all confusing, honestly. 

She’d been afraid he was dead when the Flood disappeared one day – when he had called its love back to fight for him.  He didn’t interrupt her story to explain that, though, just as she didn’t explain why she kept trying to rescue him after that.  Something was hidden there, only revealed in the faint pink tinge he saw in her face when he stole glances up at her.

She finished her story in the time it took him to devour three double-patty burgers.  Something as simple as eating – especially when he didn’t have to steal the food – made him feel more real again, like his time in the Realm of Darkness had been a dream.

He took another glance up from his burger at Aqua.  _Not too bad a dream, though, all things considered._ The Dark Wind felt worlds away.  As it should.

“I thought you might like this place.”  She smiled, passing him a napkin, which he took and then promptly ignored.  His face was just going to get more grease on it, anyway.  “Ven loved burgers.”

That almost made him want to spit it out.  If it hadn’t been so dang good, anyway.  “Are you always going to compare me to Ventus?”

“I’m sorry, it just comes naturally,” she said, though her voice didn’t sound that apologetic.  “Ven and Terra are my friends.  When you remind me of them, I mean it as a compliment.  And, well, you and Ven did come from the same person; it only makes sense that you would have some similarities.”

“Whatever,” he grumbled through another mouthful.  He should let it go.  He was with Aqua; that was the only thing that mattered.

“That reminds me – you never answered my question,” she said.  Her fingers uncharacteristically fiddled with a napkin of her own.  “I just need to know, Van, even if the answer is no.  Will you come with me to save them?”

“You never answered _my_ question,” he replied, trying to pin her with his eyes.  “Why is it hard to explain if I’m your best friend?”

They stared at each other across the table, a long moment of silence passing.  An employee gave them a funny look as he passed with a stack of empty food trays.  Vanitas chose to think it was just because of their dark suits, and not because he’d overheard any of their conversation.

“You answer first,” they both said at the same time.  Vanitas had thought his gaze would’ve been enough to compel her to go first.  Apparently, her stare was stronger.  Sighing, he broke first – sort of.

“They hate me, Aqua,” he said quietly, his fears tumbling out as words rather than Unversed.  “Maybe Ventus won’t.  If he remembers anything when he wakes up, he might know that I saved you.  But Terra?  He’ll try to kill me after what I did to you two.  You might be able to see me differently, Aqua, but here, in the Realm of Light… I’m just another shadow.”

“Van…”  She reached an arm across the table, holding his grease-covered hand.  “I don’t care where we are, the Realm of Darkness or the Realm of Light.  You’re no shadow.”

“Well, I’m no light, either.”  He shook his head, but gripped his hand tighter.  “Aqua, I’ve changed a lot – _you’ve_ changed me.  But I’m still no Ventus or Terra.  I never will be.  If you can understand that, if you can accept it… then I’ll go with you.”

Her eyes widened.  Then a smile slowly broke across her face.  “You… will?”

_Of course I will.  I’d do anything not to lose you again._ “Long as you promise to keep them from killing me.  And, like I said, don’t expect me to be like Terra or Ventus.”

“Van, I don’t expect that at all,” she said sincerely.  “There’s something _you_ don’t understand.  I’ve never wanted you to be Terra or Ven.  I want you to be _you_ – the best you you can be.”

He raised an eyebrow.  “By definition, Ventus would be the best version of me.”

She shook her head.  “As much as I talk about him and Terra – because I do love them, even after the trouble they put me through – I don’t think that’s true.  There are good things you’ve done that they never would have.”

“Like what?”  He asked, unsure whether to hope or be hurt.  Aqua loved Terra and Ventus.  She said so.  Did she have enough love for him, too?

“Like when I gave you the Wayfinder.  Neither of them… seemed to care very much.”  Her head bowed.  “I worked for weeks on them, but Terra just called me ‘such a girl’ – and _sometimes,_ at that – and Ven… well, I don’t think he understood what it meant to me.  I suppose that’s to be expected when you have two clueless boys as your best friends.”  She sighed, then looked up at him with a smile.  “But you, Van – the Wayfinder I gave you was made of broken trash and bits of my clothing.  It was hardly worth being a gift at all.  But I saw the look on your face when I gave it to you.  You would have thought I’d given you the worlds.”

“Yeah,” he said matter-of-factly.  He saw no point in being embarrassed about it.  “That’s exactly what it felt like.”  He reached down to his belt with his free hand, feeling for the familiar charm.  Only then did he remember, and he nearly leapt out of his chair. “It’s still in the Realm of Darkness!  I dropped it when you showed up – I have to get it back!”

“Whoa, Van, slow down!”  She grabbed his other hand so she could hold them both tightly, keeping him at the table.  “We can’t go back there!  I’ll make you a new one.  In fact, I can make you a better one now.”

“I don’t know that I want a better one.  I want _that_ one.”  He frowned, but he forced himself to calm down.  He had Aqua.  He didn’t need the charm to remind him of her, to feel her close, to smell her clean and flowery scent.  Even with his dampened sense of smell, that particular scent was stronger than ever.

“Well, I guess I can break another Panacea, if that’s what you really want,” she said with a wry smile.  “But you know we can’t go back.  Though I’m honored that you would want to for something I gave you.”

He sighed.  “You have no idea, Aqua.  Your Wayfinder saved my life more times than I can count.  I think it even saved me from going insane.”

She raised her eyebrows, still looking a little amused.  “You’re always so quick to underestimate me.  I think I actually have a very good idea.”

“Oh, yeah?”  He challenged.

“Yeah.”  She leaned forward, face growing pink again.  “Remember how I told you that the Flood you created disappeared?”

“…Yeah?  And that matters why?”

“I thought that meant… I thought you were dead,” she whispered.  “And… I hope you won’t accuse me of exaggeration, but a part of me died that day.  I almost gave up.  My darkness seemed to swallow me; Riku and Mickey had to take care of me for a week.  Do you want to know what kept me going?”

“Duh.  Don’t ask stupid questions.”  He leaned closer, elbow sliding into a small splatter of ketchup.

She laughed for a moment before continuing.  “My Wayfinder started glowing one night.  It was very faint; at first I thought I’d imagined it, but it gave me hope anyway.  Then, a week or so later… I heard your voice.”

She looked at him expectantly, as if he would confirm or deny that she was insane.  But he just asked, “What did I say?”

Her eyes darted away.  Her face colored even more.  And he remembered.

_I love you, Aqua.  I miss you…_

He cursed.  “You weren’t supposed to hear that.”  If he told her, he wanted it to be to her face, not from worlds away.  But if it had given her the strength to keep going…

She looked up, eyes widening.  “You don’t even know what I was going to say!”

“You underestimate me,” he quoted her.  “I know more than you think I do.”  He slipped out of his seat, tugging her by both of her hands.

“Van!  Where are we going?”

He brushed past a couple of people entering the café and ran into the street, letting go of one of Aqua’s arms so he didn’t have to run backwards.  Radiant Garden didn’t look anything like he remembered – Aqua had mentioned that it had gone by the name Hollow Bastion for a while, after Xehanort had somehow screwed the world over.  Regardless, he could still dredge up enough memories to drag her to a place he figured would still be secluded.  Not the fountain court; even if that part of the world was still there, he had no desire to be close to water for a long time.

“The outer gardens…?”  Aqua realized when Vanitas finally stopped in a courtyard at the edge of the city.  It wasn’t much of a garden anymore – the fountain in its center looked as if it hadn’t run for a long time, and the wilting flowers proved it.  The few flowers that were still there, anyway; many of the planters were filled with grass or rubble.  “Van, isn’t this where… um…”

“The first place we fought.”  He laughed at the realization, running a hand through his hair.  “How could I forget?  I was just looking for somewhere no idiots would spy on us.”

Not that he cared if the whole worlds knew he loved Aqua.  He just didn’t want them to know if she didn’t love him back.

“Does this place make you uncomfortable?”  He asked, but she still held tightly to his hand.  After a moment of hesitation, she shook her head.

“No.  You did some truly terrible things in the past, but that doesn’t have to define your present or your future.”  Her smile was heavy with determination.  “I’ve forgiven you, Van.  You’ve proved over and over that you deserve forgiveness.”

A weight lifted from his shoulders, just like it had the first time she’d forgiven him.  He would keep changing, keep atoning for his mistakes, if it meant that he could keep feeling that.

“Thank you, Aqua.”  He cleared his throat.  “So, you were saying…”

“Oh.”  Her face colored again.  It never used to do that unless he really ticked her off.  When had that changed?  “Why don’t you tell me?  I mean, if you already know.”

It felt like a trap.  Why hadn’t he just let her say it?  Then, if she didn’t love him too, he could’ve just laughed it off and said she was hearing things.  He could try to lie, but under the weight of her gaze he felt the truth would squeeze right out of him.

He steeled himself, mentally shoving Unversed of embarrassment into the basement of his heart.  There was no reason to be embarrassed or ashamed.  Might as well be ashamed of his black hair or gold eyes; his feelings for Aqua felt just as much a part of who he was.  A part he wouldn’t want to do without.

“You really like to make things difficult for me,” he muttered, swallowing the lump in his throat.  It was easy to think the words; what made them so difficult to say?  But he would say them, and he would say them proudly, looking her in the eyes.  He took a deep breath.

“I love you, Aqua.”

He shoved down the urge to flinch, to not watch Aqua’s reaction.  Not that he could look away, either; seeing her response was like a physical need.  He’d never loved anyone before.  He didn’t know if what he’d said was right, or how she was supposed to react.  Was the brighter color in her face good or bad?

“In… what way?”  She asked carefully. 

Really?  Of all the things she could ask, she had to ask that?  His free hand, the one not holding hers, tangled in his hair.

“The best way,” he asserted.  Then, feeling his own face flush with embarrassment, he admitted, “…I don’t know.  I’ve never loved anyone else before.”

Stepping closer, Aqua reached up and took his free hand, untangling it from his hair.  Then, she said quietly, “I don’t want to take advantage of you, Van.  You can take as much time as you need to figure it out.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”  He asked with a frown.  “It’s not supposed to be complicated.  You’re just supposed to tell me if you love me too or not.”  At least, that’s what he thought was supposed to happen.  How should he know?

Staring down at him – only slightly down, he wasn’t _that_ short – her face finally melted into a smile.  It was a smile that could have lit up the Realm of Darkness itself.  “I love you too, Van.”

A couple of Flood Inversed leapt from his shoulders, startling her back.  He cursed, catching them in midair and reabsorbing them.  “Ugh, stop it, you idiots…”

“Um, sorry…?”  Aqua said, not sure how to react.  This wasn’t going the way he expected at all.  Not that he’d been sure what to expect.

“Not your fault.  They can be, uh, tricky sometimes,” he said, face turning redder than hers.  “I answered your question.  Now you answer mine: am I your best friend or not?  Why were you being so confusing?”

“Well… that’s the part that’s difficult to explain.  Particularly if you don’t know about different kinds of love.”  Her fingers twisted around the ragged ends of her skirt.  “I never even thought this could happen…”  She shook her head.  “I’ll try to explain, but you have to promise not to be upset if I compare you to Terra and Ven.”

He frowned, but his curiosity got the best of him.  “Fine.”

“Promise?”  She raised her eyebrows; he rolled his eyes.

“ _Promise_.”

She smiled and continued, “Terra and Ven, they’re my best friends – but they’re also like my brothers.  I feel responsible for them; I was always trying to keep them out of trouble.”

_Maybe if they’d ever actually listened to her, they’d still be here now,_ he thought.  _But then again, that probably means I wouldn’t be.  Guess I’m lucky they’re idiots._

“I think – well, I think because of that, they sometimes they saw me as their mother.”  She laughed awkwardly.  “All things considered, it made sense.  Still, sometimes I felt isolated for that.  Even if they didn’t see me that way, they – Terra, at least – always saw me as a girl.  Worse – he _sometimes_ saw me as a girl.”

Vanitas listened in surprise.  Aqua had never said anything remotely negative about her friends before; he’d suspected she never spoke badly of anyone.  Except himself, of course, and maybe Xehanort.  The way her words tumbled out sounded as if she’d been holding in these thoughts for a long time.

“Honestly.  _Sometimes_ being a girl. What is that even supposed to mean?”  She said in exasperation.  “As if being a girl is a problem!  I’m _proud_ to be a girl, thank you very much!”

“Aqua?”  Vanitas cleared his throat.  “You okay?”

She started, as if she only now realized her tangent.  At least no darkness had wisped out of her; that problem should be gone for good.  “Sorry.  I just never had the chance to get that off my chest.” 

“Oh.  Well, then don’t shut up now.”  What was he supposed to say?  Apparently he could handle her going crazy with darkness, but when it came to regular emotions, he was as lost as ever.  At least for this particular one he could blame Terra.

“It’s alright, I’m fine now,” she said sheepishly.  “To get back to your question – and regardless of my, um, outburst – I love Terra and Ven.  But they’re like my family.  I could never think of them the way I… the way I’ve come to think of you,” she finished quietly.

Vanitas just stared in confusion.  “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”  It was one of the rare times he thought he might actually want to be compared to Terra and Ventus.

“See, that’s why I didn’t want to explain.  That answer depends entirely on how you feel.”  She sighed again.  “When I heard your voice through the Wayfinder, I hoped… but I wouldn’t expect you to know.  You only just learned what friendship feels like.  You’ve grown so much already.  I’m proud of you, Van.”

Her words swirled around him, like he was caught in a whirlpool.  So many things he didn’t understand.  She loved him, but not like she loved Terra and Ventus.  She was proud of him, but her eyes were a little sad.  She talked about friendship, but implied there was something more than that.

“Shut up, Aqua,” he said tenderly, pulling her into a tight hug.  It felt so better without her armor in the way.  She was so warm, warmer than he remembered her being in the Realm of Darkness.  “I love you.  Isn’t that enough?”

“Yes,” she replied immediately, hugging him back even more tightly than he held her.  Like he would slip back into the darkness if she gave him any room to let go.  “Van, I’m sorry.  That’s more than enough.”

“Don’t apologize,” he said, then added, “And don’t let go.”

She smiled; he couldn’t see it with his face buried in her shoulder, but he could feel it against his ear.  Then he felt fingers brushing through his hair, taming his wild spikes.  It felt… good.  Tentatively he reached a hand up to her own hair, mentally commanding the fingers of his suit to fade back into darkness.  It was always a pain to regrow the suit after purposely dismissing it, but he’d be getting new clothes soon anyway.

He’d never felt her hair on his bare hands before.  Not that he’d felt much with his bare hands at all.  It was like a cloud cradling his fingers.  Silky and soft.  Way better than his hair would feel; clearly she’d had time to bathe since being back in the Realm of Light.  Ugh, he was going to have to get back in water for that, wasn’t he…

He felt something soft on his cheek that startled him from the thought; he nearly jumped back in surprise.  If Aqua hadn’t been holding him so tightly, he probably would have.

Her _mouth_ was on his _face._

She’d felt him go stone still.  Her arms released him; her face was as embarrassed as he’d ever seen.  “Van – oh light, I’m sorry, I told myself I wouldn’t—”

“Hey.  I told you not to let go.”  He smirked before holding her around the waist again.  “Now, you said you were going to let me figure out how I love you.”

“I also said I wasn’t going to take advantage of you.”  She shook her head frantically.  “You have all the time you need to figure that out, you don’t have to—”

He didn’t waste time telling her to shut up.  He did that for her.  He cupped his hand behind her head and pulled her close enough for his mouth to reach hers.

_What are you doing?  Idiot!  You have_ no idea _what you’re doing; you’ve never kissed anyone!  Why would Aqua want you to kiss her anyway?  She’s older than you and better than you and she’s beautiful and you’re just an idiot!_

His mouth didn’t listen to his brain.  Thankfully, it somehow knew what to do, more or less.  Her lips tasted like she smelled: soft and flowery, sweet and clean.  It was intoxicating.  He tried to forget the fact that he probably tasted like grease and burgers.  He should’ve used those napkins after all.

She didn’t seem to care.  She melted into him, like ice turning to water – only if she was water, for once he wouldn’t mind being wet.  Her head tilted sideways, her lips shifted, and suddenly he realized he had been kissing her wrong.  _This_ was right.  He was surprised at the roughness of her kiss, at how hungry it felt, of how she ignored his metal helmet piece that had to be digging into her chin.

Not that he minded any of those things.  He was just a little disappointed that he had to divide some of his attention to pinning down the Inversed that wanted to leap out of him again.

He wasn’t sure how long they had stood there kissing before he had to pull away.  Her hand holding the back of his head made it difficult, but he twisted to the side.  He opened his eyes, gasping for breath, and she blinked as if coming out of a trance.

“That… that happened,” she said intelligently.

He grinned, though he couldn’t help seeing her in a new light.  Had that really been Aqua?  Never in a million years would he have thought she could kiss like that.  That she would _want_ to kiss like that.

That she would want to kiss _him_ like that.

“To answer your earlier question,” he said, “I like you like that.”

“Well, that makes two of us.”  She grinned back, though it still held a hint of embarrassment.

He laughed.  It was just so crazy.  So impossible.  He had hardly known he could love, and then to be loved back, and for it to be like this?The only thing that would’ve made it better would’ve been if he could’ve kissed her in front of Terra.  He doubted she’d ever agree to that, though.

“How long?”  He asked suddenly.

“Excuse me?”

“How long have you… loved me?”  Those words still felt so foreign, like his mouth hadn’t been programmed to say them.

“Well… it didn’t happen all at once.  I think it started when I gave you the Wayfinder.  It’s hard to tell, with all the darkness inside of me at the time.  I only admitted it to myself after you sent me back to the Realm of Light.”

“I had no idea.  I didn’t even know I could love at all until I made that giant Flood.”

“The Flood?”  She raised her eyebrows.  They were still so close to him; her lips were still so close.  Funny how he’d never paid attention to them until now.  “The one that stayed with me?”

“Yeah.”  He nodded.  “I made it out of my love for you.”

“Well… that explains a lot,” she said with a chuckle.

“What?  Did it do something stupid?”

“It would never leave me alone unless I ordered it to.  Actually, the fact that it listened to me at all should have been a clue.”  She laughed again.  “Plus there was the fact that it would hug me at almost every opportunity.”

“Heh.  It was smarter than I was, then.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.  “I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time for hugs now.”

“I’d better.”  He nodded.  “Now that that’s all settled, you want to get out of these stupid clothes?”

All the redness suddenly poured back into her face.  You would’ve thought he’d suggested they go streak naked through the streets – oh wait.

“I mean get some _new_ clothes,” he corrected, alleviating the shock from her face.  “Don’t worry.  I remember what you said about how people can’t run around—”

She let go of him and held up her hands.  “You know what, Van?  Let’s not talk about that. In fact, let’s pretend that never happened.”

“But I didn’t—”

“No.  Van, this time I’m going to have to tell _you_ to shut up,” she said definitively.  At least she hadn’t fulfilled her oath to kill him for bringing it up.  “And I wonder why Terra and Ven treat me like a mom…”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, _I_ don’t think you’re like a mom.”

She sighed heavily, staring up at the sky as if to ask it how she ended up with him of all people.  “You had better not think of me like a mother, or else we’re going to have some serious problems.”

He laughed and held out his hand.  “Aqua, you’re going to have some serious problems anyway.  You’ve just asked _me_ to tag along on your little adventure.  You’re stuck with me, with all the strings and problems attached.”

Smiling, she took his hand.  “You’re not the only one who has problems, Van.  I may not have the Dark Wind inside me anymore, but I still have my own darkness to fight.”

He shrugged.  “You and everyone else, Aqua.  Every light casts a shadow.”  For a moment she looked troubled by that, but he just grinned.

“But fighting shadows is what we do best.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy flying ice cream! Is it actually over??? Am I dreaming??
> 
> Oh man, I have so many notes on this. Mostly about the pairing. Yes, it ended up being romantic. I hope no one comes to my house with pitchforks and torches for that. Remember how I said I knew how this was going to end? I kind of lied. XD I went back and forth a lot, because there were pros and cons to both sides, but in the end it was Aqua that decided it. She actually really surprised me. I knew it wasn’t going to be romantic unless she was on board, but I just didn’t expect her to be, well, so on board. *sweatdrop* It was kind of interesting to write though, since usually most Aqua/Vanitas fics have Van as the more dominant one, but the character development in this one was set up much better for Aqua’s end.
> 
> I could write up a huge essay on why I decided to ship Aqua and Vanitas in this fic, but that would take too long right now and I’m planning on writing a similar thing on my brand-spanking-new tumblr anyway so I’ll probably just throw it up there. -> Taliaxlatia (dot) tumblr (dot) com. It’s called “The Dumpster That Never Was” for good reason though, most of the stuff I throw up there are crack fanfic ideas or really crappy sketches. It’s like a place to throw everything that’s not good enough for FFN or dA. (And apparently, so I can rant about how much I love Aqua/Vanitas. XD)
> 
> So yeah! If I had left it platonic, it would have been open-ended for them to get together later. I might have even written a bonus one-shot about that. But now that this is pretty well wrapped up, I probably won’t write anything else in this universe, except maybe some Vanitas and Riku friendship in “Unbreakable Chains.” Because I think that would somehow be hilarious. I’m not sure if they would hate each other or be bros.
> 
> Also, surprise!: I had planned (secretly) that if this story reached 200 reviews (which it did!) to do something special! So I’ve decided that anyone who has read and reviewed this story can send me (either via review or PM) a request for a Vanitas/Aqua story. Platonic or romance, AU or canon, crossovers, ponies, whatever floats your boat. I’ll put all of the suggestions on a poll on my FFN profile, along with a few ideas of my own, and let everyone vote on it. This time, your vote really does matter! I’ll write whichever idea comes out on top. Now, I can’t promise I’ll write it soon or quickly or anything, but I do love Aqua and Van so chances are decent that I’ll get distracted from working on my original story and want to write about them anyway. So, in summary: PM or review with your plot bunnies or vague suggestions, I’ll throw ‘em on a poll, and we’ll have a virtual hunger games to determine what I’ll write! :P
> 
> Thanks to everyone who ships Aqua/Vanitas and doesn’t think I’m crazy! XD If you are looking for more Aqua/Vanitas stuff now that this is over, I highly recommend checking out Alacquiene on FFN, her stuff is what got me into this pairing in the first place and it’s really good! I especially like “Escape” and “Colors of the Heart.” (Escape is canon, CotH is AU.) (Just don’t read “Unconditional” unless you want to scream and ball your eyes out. Seriously. You’ve been warned.) Also, “The Road to Light” by Arcawolf is pretty great, though I believe that one is strictly friendship.
> 
> (Deletes thank-you section because AO3 has a word limit here and all those people are on FFN ^^;)
> 
> Well, now that that’s done, here’s a random fun fact for anyone who braved that super long author’s note: the Archraven totally reminded Riku of one of his Dream Eaters, so that’s why he was petting it. XD
> 
> Thanks again, everyone! Until next time, may your ice cream be salty and your life be sweet! :P  
> -Taliax


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